


ribs for a trellis, flowers for a grave

by andromedabennet



Category: The 100 (TV), The 100 Series - Kass Morgan
Genre: Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Arranged Marriage, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Flower Angst, Grounder Clarke Griffin, Hanahaki Disease, Happily Ever After, Mentions of Suicide, Mutual Pining, Pining, Poisoning, Queen Clarke Griffin, Royalty, Self-Harm, Slight Suicidal Ideation, Soul Bond, Soulmates, The 100 (TV) Season 1, There is also an alternate ending with MCD, acceptance of death, frank discussions about death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:27:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 49,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27779854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andromedabennet/pseuds/andromedabennet
Summary: When Bellamy takes control over the 100 upon landing, he doesn’t expect that his first task will be to make peace with the Queen of Trikru, the leader of a group of people who by all accounts shouldn’t even exist. It certainly isn’t helping that Queen Clarke is the most annoying, self-important person he’s ever had to deal with — or at least, that’s what he likes to tell himself, though the flower petals he’s suddenly started coughing up seem to disagree. Soulbonds are unheard of on the Ark and rare among the grounders, but a bond left unreciprocated for too long can lead to only one thing: a slow and painful death as a flower grows around the lungs and heart. Unfortunately for Bellamy, the only cure for Hanahaki Disease is to complete the bond, and the Queen isn’t looking to Skaikru for a match.Written as part of The 100 Writers for BLM’s donation celebration.This story is angst with a happy ending and concludes in chapter four. Chapter five is the major character death alternate ending, which can either be enjoyed or skipped depending on your preferences.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 120
Kudos: 302
Collections: t100fic4blm Donation Celebration





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story combines the fictional Hanahaki Disease with your typical soulmates nonsense. If you aren’t familiar with Hanahaki as a fic trope, the story will explain what it is and how it works, so no worries. Admittedly, I’ve bastardized things a bit to fit the needs of this universe, so take my version with a grain of salt.
> 
> I have had a lot of fun writing this so far, and part 3 is coming along well, so hopefully I will be able to update this one quickly.
> 
> Art is by the lovely Poppy, who you can find on [tumblr](https://poppykru.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/poppykru). I’m so glad to have her amazing work to bring the story to life!
> 
> This story was written as part of The 100 Writers for BLM’s donation celebration. Find out how you can prompt fanfics, fanart, and other creative works by checking out our [carrd](https://t100fic-for-blm.carrd.co/)!

“Bellamy!” He hears, turning his head towards the sound. “The queen is asking for you!”

“The queen is _always_ asking for me,” he grumbles under his breath. There is no one around save Miller to hear his complaints, and his friend only gives a little grunt in return. Miller knows better than just about anyone how little Bellamy cares about pleasing the queen. 

He also knows, unfortunately, how necessary it all is.

When Bellamy finds the kid — one of the boys who works as a runner between their camp and the nearest town — he nods, letting him know that the message has been received.

The good news is, it only takes about fifteen minutes to walk between the dropship and the queen’s council rooms. The bad news is, that’s because they’d landed only a little over a mile from a huge town of grounders.

It still shocks Bellamy sometimes to remember the early days. Grounders weren’t supposed to exist; no one should’ve survived a nuclear apocalypse. Sure, it would’ve sucked to be the only people on the earth, but at least he wouldn’t have walked right into a warzone on day one.

“Your Highness,” he says as he enters the council chambers. The bow he gives is as sarcastic as he can make it — an over the top flourish to remind the queen just how stupid he finds all of this.

Jaha had always been an egomaniacal dick who followed the law without any regard for compassion or morals, but at least he hadn’t made people _bow_ to him.

He stands straight again, looking her dead in the eye. “Not that I’m not thrilled to be enjoying the pleasure of your company, but I’d like to know why I was sent for.”

She purses her lips, trying not to snap at him.

He’s great at getting a rise out of her. Since the day that she made ‘the leader of the sky invaders’ come into her council room to answer for the crimes of the hundred, he has been trying to rile her up and get under her skin. And while she mercifully hadn’t blamed them for the fact that their ship had landed in her territory, there was no lost love between the two leaders.

It’s really a shame that he constantly has to be stuck with her, but he doesn’t think there is any other solution. Like as not, he had taken over control as the leader of the hundred upon landing. Partially because — in all honesty — he was the most equipped for the job at the time, and partially because he had been worried about what would happen to him if he _wasn’t_ in control.

Shooting the Chancellor isn’t something that people will easily forgive, and should the Ark come down, it’ll be hard to hide the truth. At least if he makes himself indispensable on the ground, then it will be harder to do away with him.

Arriving on earth and accepting the reality of grounders hadn’t been ideal, but at least he’s not completely at the mercy of the Ark’s council, either. If Jaha or fucking Marcus Kane try anything drastic, he knows the queen won’t stand for it. She doesn’t have to like him to know that he’s a better option.

“I’ve received word from the Commander. She isn’t sure what to make of you.”

He thinks of the mysterious Commander, living days away in the city of Polis. It sounds like a fairytale story rather than anything rooted in reality. A young woman with black blood, fighting for the right to control the twelve clans. Bringing them together under one coalition in an attempt to make peace. Living high up in a tower in the sky. 

It just doesn’t feel real. None of it does, honestly, but something about the Commander seems harder to believe than all the rest.

Unfortunately, according to Her Royal Pain in the Ass, it’s quite real. And even worse, this Commander has the final say on what happens to his people.

“But you told her that we’re not attacking? That we’ve made preliminary moves to integrate into Trikru by joining you here in Xandri?”

“Yes,” she says, pointed and short. She must not like having her actions questioned, as though it could insinuate that she isn’t trustworthy.

For all he finds her to be annoying, she hasn’t yet turned them away, or marched on them, or forced them into work as slaves to her people. He might not understand her altruism, but at this point he also can’t bring into question its very real existence.

“So what’s her problem?”

“You're a question mark to the coalition. Will we use you to make ourselves stronger so we can fight against the others? Will you slaughter us all in our sleep? Will you bring down the rest of your people and put all the clans in danger? There are too many unknowns.”

“I’ve told you,” he growls out, “that I do believe they’ll try to bring down the Ark, and frankly there’s nothing I can do to stop them. They can’t hear us down here, even with Raven working uselessly on the radios. We can’t tell them that you’re here, or to avoid your settlements, or anything that might keep them from accidentally starting a war.”

“I _know,”_ she responds, clearly annoyed. “I’ve listened to your explanations a thousand times, and I’ve never once questioned your honesty. You seem to be forgetting that I’m the one putting my neck out on the line for all of you. I told the Commander that your people are currently few and aren’t capable of leading an attack — that you’re doing all you can to ingratiate yourself to us and our way of life. You aren’t presently a threat, and provided you _stay that way,_ I have no issue with having you here. But guns and radios and children from the sky… it isn’t something that the coalition is going to easily accept.”

He rubs his hand over his face, exhausted already at the thought of what will need to be done if they are to be welcomed into the coalition. “So what’s our next step?”

She looks down at the table between them in the council room, pushing aside various letters that have been sent to her. “We will have to write to some of the other leaders. All of them would be better, and maybe we can try, but more personal appeals will need to go to our closest neighbors. Some are allies, and some are… _not._ But they are the ones who will have the most to say about you being here.”

“Which clans are those?”

“Louwoda Kliron, Trishanakru, and Azgeda are the biggest three we’ll need to worry about. You’re lucky — we’ve been at odds with Azgeda for decades, but Queen Nia was killed in combat not long ago, and I am well-acquainted with the new king. We stand a fair shot at convincing them.”

He frowns. “How fair a shot are we talking?”

She shakes her head in confusion. “I don’t know. I can’t make promises, but he’ll be more willing to listen than his mother would’ve been.”

“I need more than _willing to listen,_ Clarke. These are my people. I won’t let them die just because you want to play politics.”

She scowls at him. “I’m not sure what you expect, but _playing politics_ is going to have to be enough for the time being. I’m not doing this to toy with you or hurt your people. If you want the respect of the coalition, we’ll have to earn it.”

He thinks of the guns they’d found in the little underground bunker not far from the dropship landing site. He doesn’t want to go to war — of course not. They’d lose so quickly and it would all be for nothing. But to think that they have no control over their future — that they have to hope and pray that the _Queen of Trikru_ is really going to solve all their problems… 

Clarke is so far up her own ass that he can hardly stand it. She thinks she’s some expert political engineer, creating situations like moves on a chessboard, but he knows it isn’t true. She’s untested, hardly older than a child. He has at least three or four years on her, and it seems impossible that she’s been queen for long enough to have truly honed her craft.

She’s going to pussyfoot around the problem, and eventually all of his people will end up dead. His _sister_ will end up dead. Maybe the deaths of so many will wound Clarke’s pride, but it won’t be a loss to her. He’ll be the one who gambled the lives of his people and lost.

“So we have to go around begging for recognition? How long will they hold my people in suspense before they decide we’re not worth the trouble?”

“I don’t know, Bellamy! But I’ve already told you that we’ll stand behind you if it comes down to it.”

“Really?” He asks, sarcasm lacing the word. He steps toward her, getting close enough that she’s forced to stare up at him. “You’re not going to fall in line behind your Commander when she orders you to? I can’t leave my people vulnerable while you decide if we’re worth the effort. If we go to war without allies, we’ll be slaughtered.”

“You aren’t going to _war,_ Bellamy. Stop being dramatic. That’s the whole point of reaching out to the other leaders.”

He thinks about the greed of leaders — of the things that people will do in their own self-interest.

He’d like to think that Clarke is an example of a good leader — someone willing to help him when he’s desperate to save all the children cast down to the earth by their own unforgiving government — but that would be too simplistic. Clarke isn’t working out of the goodness of her heart. She’s helping them because they can help her in return. One hundred young people who will do anything to survive make great laborers. Some might be apprenticed to healers or other trades. Eventually they’ll get older and marry into the population of Xandri, or perhaps move out to the surrounding farmlands and smaller territories like Tondisi. They’ll give Trikru children to further the cause. In the end, she will win every bit as much as his people will. Their success is hers as well, if only she can help them in the early days.

“I want to meet the Commander,” he says, no room for argument in his voice.

She glares up at him, arms crossed over her chest like a shield against him. “You haven’t been invited, and you’ll never make it to her audience chambers without permission. You should just feel lucky you have the opportunity to talk to _me.”_

“Grateful?” He asks, disbelieving laughter in his voice. “Yeah, I’m so grateful that you keep putting me in my place and telling me there’s nothing I can do to protect these kids. It’s great to have to put all my faith in some spoiled little _princess_ who will lose absolutely nothing if this goes south. Your place in the coalition is already assured. You’re not risking anything for me. But yeah, remind me again how grateful I am. It’s a fucking honor to be here.”

He never would’ve spoken to her in this manner on day one. Actually, on day one he had been overwhelmingly grateful, happy that he wasn’t going to be forced into an immediate war upon landing. 

But it’s day thirty-nine, and no real progress has been made. Only a few members of the hundred have even gone to stay in Xandri’s walls. The rest are still at the dropship, waiting to know what their fate will be. Some are too afraid to come into the town, worried that if they leave the perceived safety of the dropship, they’ll walk straight into a trap and never leave.

Meanwhile the other clans and the Commander have been as unhelpful as ever, making no move to either accept the hundred or to declare war.

They can’t wait forever. Bellamy either needs to see his people be granted unconditional welcome into Trikru and the coalition at large, or he needs to round them all up and run somewhere far from the clans. For as long as they sit at a standstill, he can’t plan his next move.

Clarke’s eyes narrow at him, annoyed at last by his demeaning words. She’s a queen, after all, and none of her people would ever dare speak to her that way. Bellamy’s the only one reckless enough to try. At least if she’s angry, she won’t be completely complacent.

“Evela, Arneg,” she calls out to the two silent guards at the door. Her eyes never leave Bellamy’s. “Bellamy kom Skaikru was just leaving. You’ll be kind enough to escort him out.”

The two guards — one a woman with a baldric across her body to carry a huge warhammer, and the other a man with a longsword — walk across the room until they are either side of him. Their hands come up to grab at his shoulders, but he keeps his attention on the queen.

“We aren’t finished, _Your Majesty._ I thought you wanted to write to your friend in Azgeda.”

“We will strategize again when you have a cooler head,” she nods to her guards, who start to force him towards the exit. He doesn’t bother putting up a fight, letting them guide him along instead of making them drag him out. 

He’s had to be dragged out a few times in the past, and none of his fighting ever makes an ounce of difference. He always ends up on the other side of the door when she wills it.

“You’re wasting time, Clarke. You’re gambling with human lives. You can’t—”

“I’m _playing the game,_ Bellamy. Certainly better than you are. We’ll consider our next moves tomorrow. Go home and don’t return until you’re ready to start thinking like a diplomat. Only part of statecraft is war, and it’s not the part we’re aiming for.”

Her words are just finishing when the guards toss him out of the room. Luckily he keeps his footing this time and manages not to fall on his ass like an idiot. He brushes off his jacket, glaring at the door for a moment before stalking towards the edges of the town. 

He walks back to the dropship, silently fuming. Every interaction he has with the queen goes exactly like this one has: he expresses what he considers to be _reasonable concern_ about the path they are taking to legitimize his people, and then she tells him that her way is obviously the only way and he should be grateful for her help.

And he is — that’s the kicker. He has no choice but to be. She could’ve slaughtered them all as soon as they’d landed, but she’d let him make his case. She’d allowed him to meet with her frequently to try to plan for what comes next. She’d welcomed some of the hundred into Xandri, and was making plans to have them all relocate there soon. It’s been _Bellamy_ stopping them from all going to live within the town walls, too afraid of the position that might put them in to consider the benefits. 

Clarke has never expressed a desire for violence against his people. Against anyone, actually. Despite the fact that he knows she had fought for her role as queen, she never speaks of war as a goal. She believes in the coalition, even if it makes the sword at her side practically useless.

He doesn’t know if she will be willing to go to war for his people if it comes down to it. There are only one hundred of them, and it would realistically be no huge loss to her if they are eradicated. Sure, they may prove useful, but she doesn’t need them. They are potentially an asset, but certainly not a necessity.

He can’t decide if it would be better or worse for the rest of the Ark to come down. They could be seen as enemy agents — might even _be_ enemies if they refuse to ally themselves to Trikru as Bellamy has done. But having more people from the sky in her territory also offers distinct advantages to Clarke. If he wants to give her a reason to go to war on behalf of the clan she’s dubbed Skaikru, offering her doctors, fighters, and farmers would be a stronger incentive than a bunch of scared kids.

When he arrives back at the camp, he has no answers for Miller or Raven or any of the dozen people who come up to him for updates. They’ll just have to wait.

Like always.

***

It takes eight more days before Clarke convinces him to move the rest of his people in Xandri. It’s not a move he wants to make — not by a longshot. But the reality is that it’s only going to grow colder each day, the warmth of summer having already begun to fade. They can’t protect themselves from the elements with just the hollowed out shell of the dropship and a few tents.

Still, finding accommodation for one hundred people on short notice isn’t easy, even in a town as busy and bustling as Xandri. He spends an unpleasant amount of time arguing in the council room about where temporary tents can go and if they will have time to build enough shelters before winter hits. They go back and forth on whether it would be smarter to create one or two large buildings that are capable of housing dozens of kids dormitory-style despite the difficulties they would face in heating such open spaces, or if it would be better in the long run to make many smaller buildings meant to house somewhere between two and ten people, depending on how the kids divide themselves up.

It’s a mess trying to organize, and he and Clarke leave the meetings feeling both hot headed and completely drained. It’s impossible to agree with each other on anything. Even when he knows he’s making solid points, he’s convinced she refutes him just because she can. She enrages him beyond the level of anyone else he knows.

He’s certain that if she just shut her stupid royal mouth for ten seconds, he could get her to see his side. The trouble is, she’s always convinced she’s right.

Not, incidentally, in the same way that he always thinks he’s right. It’s different. He just happens to be right a lot; that’s not his fault. If more people listened to him, things probably wouldn’t go ass up all the time.

In the end, they agree to a compromise: a larger central building that will be the priority, and a handful of smaller ones nearby to help get people into something a little cosier. They’ll eventually want everyone to have their own homes, as it will make them true residents of the town with a stake in its success, but for now there are time constraints to deal with. Even with most of the hundred acting as laborers, it’ll be a lot of work to complete.

When they finally finish hashing out all the details they can for the day, he sticks out his hand to her. She eyes him warily before reaching out to shake it.

“Thanks,” he says gruffly. He isn’t particularly glad to be thanking her, but he knows that she’s doing a lot of work for his people. He can at least acknowledge it.

“I’m not doing it for you,” is her haughty response. He laughs, unsure if it’s a sarcastic, snarky laugh or something more genuine. For all that Clarke is the single most annoying person he’s ever met, she’s also the only person who seems willing to go toe to toe with him these days. Sometimes he really needs someone to fight with just to let off steam, and she never fails to amuse.

“I know. I appreciate it more for that reason alone.”

He leaves the council room without having to be thrown out this time. He heads back to his own tent, stopping to find someone along the way who is down for a little evening fun. It’s a girl this time, newly eighteen and still high on the knowledge that they’ll never again be trapped in a tin can.

He leads her to his tent without shame. It’ll be someone else tomorrow. Miller, maybe, if they’re both keyed up enough, or Bree. Sometimes it’s an especially brave grounder who isn’t worried about the stigma of fucking a sky person. 

It doesn’t really matter all that much in the scheme of things. Like arguing with Clarke, it’s just another way to loosen up.

***

He doesn’t see much of Clarke outside of meetings. Somehow, she manages to be everywhere at once — attending to her council, overseeing the building process, watching training routines for the warriors, visiting with the farmers and the cooks and the healers, and entertaining the children who bombard her at mealtimes.

It’s infuriating that she is somehow managing everything at once in her own perfect life while nothing gets accomplished with his suit. He tries not to feel bitter about it, but it’s just so difficult. He always sees her out of the corner of his eye — the idyllic little queen. It’s impossible to forget exactly what he’s up against here.

Every day they make small, useless moves to try to mitigate the threat towards Skaikru. 

Every night he goes to sleep more frustrated by Clarke than ever. 

***

“Why don’t you like Clarke?” Octavia asks him one afternoon, flopping down across from him at the table with her lunch.

“Don’t know what you mean,” he says into the next bite of his food.

“Lincoln said you’re always arguing with her in the command room.”

“Lincoln?” He asks, alarm in his voice. Octavia brushes him off with an errant gesture, trying to keep him on topic. He tables the subject for now, already forming arguments in his head for later. He doesn’t know _why_ his sister is getting information from Clarke’s lead healer on the council, but that’s something to argue about when he can give it his full attention. “I don’t dislike Clarke. She’s fine.”

“A ringing endorsement.”

“Look, I don’t need to like her. I just need to get along with her enough to get a deal for us. That’s the most important thing to worry about right now. We need to have a permanent home, here or elsewhere. We can’t keep waiting to find out if we can stay.”

“But she’s trying, right? She hasn’t sent us away.”

“She’s trying,” he admits. _Not hard enough,_ he wants to add, but manages to bite his tongue. He knows — deep, deep in his heart — that she’s doing what she can under the circumstances. She can’t go to war over a hundred kids who she isn’t even directly responsible for. 

He just wishes that her going to bat for him actually felt like it was making any difference whatsoever. Every day they wait is a day lost if they need to run.

It’s not really Clarke he’s angry at — it’s their whole system. He’s an outsider trying to gain recognition from a people who can force him to do anything. He has no leverage in the game. Clarke being his ally is actually the only thing protecting him right now, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t frustrated to have his lot tied so firmly to hers.

“She’s trying,” he repeats. “But we’ll have to see how much good that does us in the end.”

“Maybe don’t be quite so hard on her. Linc— _someone_ said that she really can get us allies if we’re careful. Did you write to the other leaders yet?”

“Not yet. We’re waiting to hear news from Louwoda Kliron first. It seems like their king or chancellor or commander or whatever is sick, and they are trying to put a provisional leader in place until they see if the first one recovers. Clarke doesn’t want to start sending out missives until we know what the political landscape is.”

“See, that sounds wise. You’re too quick to complain about the help she’s giving us.”

He doesn’t think _Octavia_ of all people should be lecturing him on patience, but he’s not going to bring that up. Since landing on earth, she’s become the very model of immediate gratification. 

“I just want to be certain we’re safe, O. It’s frustrating not to know. We’re pawns in a game we don’t understand.”

“I get it, Bell. We left one viper pit on the Ark for another. But we’re here now — on the ground! Enjoy it for five seconds before you give yourself an aneurysm. And maybe try not to scream at Clarke for a day. You get more bees with honey or whatever.”

He huffs. “I’ll try.” Then, under his breath, he adds, “But sometimes she starts it.”

Octavia shoves the rest of his bread in her mouth, rolling her eyes at him while she chews. He can see she wants to tell him to grow up, but is just barely gracious enough not to say it. He feels chastised even still.

“Just get on her good side. You’re the only one she’ll meet with anyway, so unless you’re planning to start delegating, you’re going to have to learn to deal with it.”

***

“Clarke!” He explodes, standing up from the table without warning, his chair tipping over behind him. He’s lucky everyone else has already left the meeting room, otherwise he’d definitely have a few guards and councilmembers to answer to. “We can’t keep waiting to see if this guy will die or not! We need to write to Louwoda Kliron and the others _now.”_

 _“That guy_ is our ticket to getting your people accepted, Bellamy! If we get Coran on our side, he will persuade Ingranronakru, Delfikru, and Podakru to act in our favor!”

“Coran is _sick,_ Clarke! How long do we wait to see if he’ll recover? Why can’t we make an alliance with the next in line?”

“I don’t have a strong relationship with the next in line. Coran has always backed Trikru, and I think we’ll have the best luck with him. Otherwise, if Klins does take over, we’ll have to target a different clan from the outset. I still think Azgeda and Trishanakru will come to our aid, and that’s a good start. We just need more, and for that I wanted to go through Coran and Louwoda Kliron.”

“I don’t see why we need Louwoda Kliron to get to Podakru. Didn’t you say you’re already in an alliance? Shouldn’t that be enough?”

“Podakru will go where they think they will win. They won’t want to back Trikru if they suspect the rest of the coalition will go against us. It’s just numbers, Bellamy. That’s how they’re all thinking — they want to know if we’ll have the numbers.”

He groans, hand grabbing a fistful of his hair to tug on in frustration.

“So we’re playing chess on twelve different fronts, just hoping that someone will have mercy on us?”

“Sure, if that’s how you want to picture it.” She looks down at the maps in front of her, clearly done with this argument. 

“And you’re still certain the Commander won’t meet with me? It would be easier to make our case straight to the source.”

“Positive.” She doesn’t even glance up as she answers him.

“God, then what use is she?”

“Interclan cohesion,” she says smoothly. If she’s trying to make a point about not rising to meet his ire, it’s only making him more annoyed. This facade of calm isn’t doing anything beneficial. She just keeps staring at the maps on the table, like something might change if she looks away.

“You are so _annoying!”_ He bursts out, unable to keep it contained. It’s not a new opinion on his side, thankfully, so it’s unlikely he’ll accidentally offend the queen. This is more or less routine for them by now.

“Having to deal with you has taught me the fine art of being an absolute asshole,” she snipes.

Bellamy isn’t unaware that he’s being slightly unreasonable, but what other choice does he have? He needs to keep forcing this process along, because otherwise he doesn’t know what will happen to them.

“Come on, Princess. Grease the wheels a little,” he says, getting closer to her. To egg her on, maybe, or to make her nervous. He isn’t sure it’ll achieve anything — Clarke is, after all, one of the most remarkably composed people he’s ever met, despite how frequently he manages to irritate her. Still, it’s worth a shot. “We don’t have all the time in the world to make this happen.”

“I’m not sure what you think the coalition will do in the meantime, but it’s not like I’m planning to kick you out any time soon.”

“I think I’d rather not run the risk of them telling you to kick us out.”

“Then stop _pissing me off,”_ she hisses. He’s right by her now, leaning over her shoulder to look down at the map she’s so entranced by. There’s nothing exciting there. It’s the same information they’ve been staring at for days — the same borders and enemies and problems. They need support from enough clans that they will have a majority in any vote that might be called by the Commander. He doesn’t see how hyper-fixating on the map is going to change the current state of things. She might be able to glare at Bellamy until she gets her way, but he’s fairly certain that doesn’t work on the inanimate.

“Just trying to encourage you,” he says with a teasing smile. Flirting is one of the few tactics he _hasn’t_ tried yet. 

She swings a hand back behind her without any real force, and it hits his chest.

“Go away, Bellamy. Find someone to entertain you for the night and leave the actual work to me.”

He sighs, moving away from her. “Fine, but we’re going to need to do _something_ soon. Treading water won’t get us anywhere.”

She just waves him off, and he leaves feeling annoyed at the dismissal.

Annoyed is his constant state.

***

Bellamy wakes up from a deep, relaxing sleep to the sound of shouting.

Bursting out of his tent while still pulling on his jacket, he surveys the area around him. Everything seems fine on the outset, but in the distance he can just catch sight of people running into the walls of Xandri. 

“Fog!” Someone yells.

Clarke, who has unsurprisingly stumbled out of the command rooms half awake rather than her own cabin, sprints towards medical. He follows behind her.

“Fog?” He asks when they make it inside.

“The yellow fog I told you about,” she says, not bothering to look at him. She puts on a protective covering over her clothes and hands, not wanting to get whatever has touched the afflicted on her own skin.

“Acid. The acid fog.”

She nods, taking a look at the people who have come in. Most are already frantically washing themselves off with the help of Lincoln and Nyko. They are the ones who will survive. 

But there are a few from the early morning hunting party who are unaccounted for, presumably still out in the fog. They will be dead, and there is no hope for them.

That just leaves Atom.

Atom had been eager in the aftermath of the dropship’s landing to make himself useful. Bellamy didn’t mind — giving the kid more tasks made it all the easier to keep him away from Octavia. When they’d moved into the walls of Xandri, he’d been recommended to join the hunting parties. He shadowed, mostly — learning to track and stay silent in the woods. They hadn’t even given him a weapon yet, saving that for his training hours in the afternoons, safely inside the walls of the town.

Now, his skin is blistering from the chemical agents in the wind. His lips move just barely, but Bellamy can’t hear what he’s saying. He leans closer, desperate to do something to help. Anything, anything…

“Kill… me…” he whispers, pain lacing every word.

“Atom—”

“Please… I’m— please…”

Bellamy just looks at him, struck dumb for a moment. He can’t kill Atom. He can’t—

“Move aside,” comes a gentle voice from behind him. Automatically, he steps to his left, giving the person more space.

Clarke, so small next to him, takes the open spot. She looks certain of what she’s doing, and her calm demeanour reassures him.

“Atom, isn’t it?” She asks carefully, her voice sweet and light.

“Yes, please— please... kill me…”

“It’ll be okay soon, Atom. Don’t worry. It’ll all be okay.”

He watches numbly as she pulls a small knife from the holster at her hip. 

“You’re going to be just fine,” she whispers, sliding the blade into his neck. He lets out a little gurgle sound, but Clarke just hums under her breath, holding him as he dies.

The humming eventually stops, but Bellamy can’t help but keep hearing the song on a loop in his head. He stares at Atom’s blank eyes.

He’s afraid.

Underneath all of his posturing and irritation, he’s afraid.

It’s not a revelation — he’s known this for a long time. He’s sure everyone knows it, even if they won’t say it to his face. It’s why he’s always slamming his hand on the council table, demanding they work faster to help solidify his people’s right to be here. He’s scared of the alternative; scared to watch them all die, unable to do anything to stop it.

It’s worse now, though, in the aftermath of another death. They’d been lucky so far, having been accepted into Trikru so early on. Ninety-three of the hundred still remain.

No. Ninety-two, now. 

He can’t even begin to imagine the pain of failing them. To go to his grave knowing that he wasn’t enough to protect them, that he couldn’t stop their suffering.

He is frozen in place, unable to look away. He knows he couldn’t have done anything to prevent Atom’s death, and yet the look in his lifeless eyes still pierces through him.

Why can’t he save them? How much of himself does he have to give to make sure they survive the winter?

He feels a touch on his bicep, pulling him out of his confused stupor. He looks down, seeing Clarke’s tiny hand resting there. Not doing anything, just there for comfort. He eyes it for a moment, almost unable to comprehend what it’s doing there. His brain isn’t firing at full capacity.

“I’m sorry,” she says, glancing up at him. He drags his gaze away from her hand to look down at her. Her eyes are tired and resigned, but her face isn’t closed off.

This isn’t fighting. It’s mourning.

She continues. “I wish I could’ve done more for him.”

His voice comes out gruff. “You did what you could. We couldn’t have saved him.”

“I am going to try,” she says, tone reassuring. “For all of them. I know you don’t believe me, or don’t think I’m trying hard enough. But I really do want to help them.”

His eyes flit over to Atom’s again briefly before returning to Clarke. “I know. I’m sorry.”

She squeezes his arm once, and there’s something nice about that little extra bit of pressure. It’s grounding.

“You care about them. I understand that. It’s why I never throw you out of the council room until after all the important decisions have been made. You’re doing what you can to help your people.”

“I need to do more,” he mumbles, annoyed at himself.

“You need to rest. We’ll meet later, Bellamy. Nothing is going to happen to them in the meantime.”

“You’re going to regret saying that if I go back to sleep and something _does_ happen,” he tries to joke, but he isn’t feeling very funny. Still, she gives him a little smile.

“I can hold down the fort for a few hours.”

She uses her hand to guide him out of the medical cabin, and he walks back to his tent still in a daze.

***

“Bellamy!” Clarke says, an uncharacteristic smile on her face as she walks into the command rooms. “Good news!”

Since Atom’s death and the burial that had followed, Clarke has been friendly in a distant kind of way. Smiles from the other side of a fire, or sitting adjacent to him at meals. They aren’t at each other’s throats anymore, at least not in a genuine way. It’s weird, trying to bridge the gap between enemies and whatever they are now. Allies, maybe. Reluctant but respectful comrads.

“What happened?”

“Coran wrote back from Louwoda Kliron! He’s made a full recovery and would like to hear more about our suit!”

He jumps up from his seat. “Are you serious?”

She nods excitedly, and for just a second he’s so overcome that he pulls her into a hug, laughing all the while. It’s been so long since he’s felt hopeful, but Clarke has said repeatedly that Coran would be amenable, and now he’s healthy and ready to listen.

Once his brain catches up with his actions, he realizes that he’s _hugging the queen._ He’s the least reverential person on the planet as far as he’s aware, but this still has to be some kind of breach of protocol.

But Clarke just hugs him in return, still smiling widely.

“We’ll have to start drafting a compelling letter as soon as possible. They’re going to need as much information about you all as we can give them, as well as a full picture of what happens if the rest of your people come down. That will be their main concern.”

They pull apart, getting to work immediately. They draft three similar letters to the three heads of state they’ll be appealing to: Coran of Louwoda Kliron, Otish of Trishanakru, and Roan of Azgeda. The details of the situation are kept mostly the same, though the way in which the information is presented differs based on the recipient: Clarke says that Roan likes his letters short and sweet, sprinkled with a little humor, while Otish prefers long epistles.

He’s lucky, he knows, to be doing this with Clarke. He’s yelled at her for weeks now about her need to stay within the rules of the game, but he can’t deny that she knows those rules backwards and forwards. She can charm these leaders because she already knows what they want to see, and he can’t put a price on a skill like that. No amount of his own work would do even half of what her carefully crafted letters can do.

They work late into the day, having to light candles to see by.

And then they work all the next day.

On the third day, Clarke is convinced the letters are perfect. She has them dispatched with three different riders, and Bellamy crosses his fingers that it works.

***

Raven gets the radio working a week later, and the sheer joy that he hears from Marcus Kane of all people is frightening.

“You’re alive,” he says, the relief palpable. “I need to tell the Chancellor immediately.”

“Yes, we’re alive. But we’re not alone down here,” Raven responds, giving him the explanation of the grounders.

Bellamy stalks away from the room where they’ve set up the radio, suddenly stressed.

“Fuck,” he mutters under his breath. “Fuck.”

“What’s wrong?” Clarke asks, standing in the corner of the room, arms crossed over her chest tightly. Her posture is rigid, like she’s not thrilled by this turn of events either. But what are they supposed to do — leave twenty-five hundred people to die in space?

“I shot the Chancellor in order to get down here, and unless they elected someone else really quick, it sounds like it didn’t take.”

“And you’re worried they’ll retaliate?” 

“I’d prefer it if they didn’t, but I don’t see how that’s possible.”

She presses her lips together in thought before saying, “Leave it to me.”

Before he can ask what on earth that’s supposed to mean, she sweeps out of the room, her cloak flowing behind her.

***

She finds him that night at dinner, sitting herself next to him unceremoniously as she says, “It’s handled.”

“What?” He asks, mid-chew like an idiot. He swallows before trying again. “What do you mean, _it’s handled?_ What exactly did you do?”

“They needed a way to bring down their space station without putting all of you and themselves at the center of a war. I told them I might have the coordinates for a place they could safely aim if they’ll pardon any crimes done by the hundred and Bellamy Blake.” Her words are hardened by her resolve, and yet somehow she makes the whole thing sound frighteningly easy. She is good at strong-arming people, and she knows it. It’s so casual how she gets her way, as though it takes no effort at all. Really, she’s just good at her job.

Not that he’ll admit that to her face.

“And they think they can hit a precise mark while freefalling through space?” He asks dubiously.

“That sounds like a problem for their engineers. But they know where there’s miles and miles of open, unclaimed land that won’t start any wars. What they do with that is their prerogative.”

“And all you wanted in this trade was my pardon?”

“Well, I wasn’t intending to leave them to die even if I hadn’t wanted something from them in return. At least this way we might not have to go to war over space junk falling from the sky. But don’t worry, I’ve made it clear what their position is if they come down and decide to join Trikru.”

“And that position is…?”

“As my subjects. Provisionally, in the beginning. And then they can become honorary members of Trikru. But I’m in charge, and they’ll either learn to live with it or they’ll be enemies of the coalition.”

“You are, quite honestly, terrifying, Clarke. Seriously — terrifying.”

She nods sagely. “Thank you.”

“It wasn’t—” He stops himself, shaking his head with a smile. “Never mind.”

***

The Ark radios confirmation that they’ll be coming down in two days, giving them just enough time to finalize the calculations.

Clarke sends a hasty letter to the Commander and the ambassadors in Polis, warning them of what will happen. She says she will take point on the issue — willing to accept them into Trikru if they’re amiable, or willing to shoot them on sight if not.

The ambassadors aren’t thrilled by the plan, but they can’t stop a space station from hurtling to earth, so they decide to see how the situation plays out. Commander Lexa sends back confirmation of the plan.

The Ark falls exactly on schedule, and Bellamy’s breath catches in his throat as he watches it enter the atmosphere.

He’d been too preoccupied with his worries for Octavia and what he’d just done to get onto the dropship to bother focusing on his own descent. It’s frightening to see something hurl itself to the earth with very little precision. He can only hope that the engineers were careful. A miscalculation could be the ruination of Skaikru.

There’s a crash miles away in the distance, and Clarke nods her head once.

“Well, I suppose we should ride out to meet them. Bellamy, find fifteen or so volunteers to join us. They’ll want to see their children. The rest should stay here.”

His first reaction is to say _you don’t tell me what to do,_ only… she sort of does. For all that he’s become the unofficial spokesman for Skaikru, she’s still in charge.

Then he wants to say _you’re splitting us up to make us weak — keeping the most vulnerable here within your walls so we won’t fight back._

But that’s ridiculous, too. He’d believe it of almost anyone else. He’d certainly believe it of the elusive Commander. But Clarke wouldn’t do that… wouldn’t use his people against him.

He doesn’t have faith in much — not in the leaders of the Ark, or the leaders in Polis, or even his own leadership.

But he’s starting to have a begrudging faith in her — a little more every day, until he isn’t sure what to do with it all.

The Ark’s council already knows what will happen if they choose not to join Clarke. They are free to leave, but they will be made to travel at least one hundred miles from the nearest clan lands on penalty of death. If they try to fight, they will be killed.

Sure, the guards have guns, but it’s not like they see a lot of use in the confined quarters of a space station. It wouldn’t be safe to go around shooting actual bullets on the Ark every time someone tried to gamble with their ration points, so most of the time other weapons like tasers and batons were used. Bellamy shooting the Chancellor, even non-fatally, had easily destroyed their gun crime statistics for the decade.

There’s no chance they could best Clarke’s warriors, even with the help of bullets. Of that, he’s certain.

If it comes down to it, he won’t stop her. He won’t force any of the hundred to side against their parents and loved ones, but the only loved one he has left is O, and she’s already ingratiating herself with the people of Xandri. He’s not all that worried that she’s in immediate danger. 

So, yeah… if it comes down to it, he’ll stand with Clarke. He’ll fight alongside her, for whatever his fighting skills are worth.

Which is why, when she tells him to grab a handful of the hundred to travel to the crash site, he does what she says.

***

“I demand to be let in!”

Bellamy picks up his pace as he nears the council building in order to find the source of the shouting.

It’s not a surprise, really, when he arrives. Clarke’s queensguard have stationed themselves at the entrance to the small building, and Chancellor Jaha and Marcus Kane are trying their damnedest to gain entry.

“I’m sorry, but the Queen will only be accepting the approved council members for this meeting,” Evela says, not looking sorry in the least. “You’ll have to wait to be summoned for a meeting with her like everyone else.”

“I am the _Chancellor of the Ark._ She will need to meet with me to discuss our alliance.”

“She already has Ark representation attending the meetings. Ah, Bellamy — there you are.”

Bellamy nods to Evela, feeling awkward in front of Jaha and Kane. If the glares they are shooting him are any indication, they don’t appreciate being passed over for a boy. A boy who was also a janitor on the Ark.

But since they’re not on the Ark any longer, he doesn’t see any reason why they should still be in charge.

“Evela, Arneg,” he greets with a nod. He’s very familiar with most of Clarke’s inner circle of guards. They’ve all tossed him out of this building enough times over the weeks. It’s that kind of interaction that builds lasting relationships, after all.

Thankfully he never gets thrown out anymore. If Clarke gets annoyed with him, she just steps on his foot under the table and moves on.

He stops outside the doors for a moment, looking at Kane and Jaha with a blank face.

“You’re going to let _Bellamy Blake_ into this meeting but not the Chancellor? He’s a criminal.”

He’d like to defend himself, but it’s technically not wrong. He did shoot the man, after all.

Clarke steps through the doorway, and the guards are quick to move closer to her, as though Thelonious Jaha of all people might try to take a swing.

“He’s been pardoned, and therefore isn’t a criminal. Seeing as we hashed these details out together only days ago, I’d expect you to remember them.”

“Clarke—”

“Your Highness,” she bites out, tone leaving no room for argument.

“Your Highness, I—”

“Bellamy Blake is an established member of our council, who has worked hard to keep peace here between our two peoples, to make alliances with the other clans, and to bring the rest of you down safely so you wouldn’t have to die choking on your own carbon monoxide. He will continue attending meetings until it pleases me to send him away. For now, anything you want me to hear will have to come through him, so it might behoove you to get in his good graces.”

Jaha just stares at her with his mouth gaping open. Bellamy doubts he’s ever been so summarily dismissed. People from Alpha are never prepared for the shoe to be on the other foot.

Clarke waves her hand at him. “It will do you no good to keep harassing my guards. You should be aware that the weapons they carry are not for show. Now go — it seems they could use a few extra hands building the _refugee halls_ we’ve had to start constructing to house all of your people. Be a good example and get to work.”

She turns back around, walking into the meeting room without looking back at the man she just eviscerated. Bellamy follows after her.

 _“Until it pleases you to send me away?”_ He asks playfully.

She glares at him. “Yes. I haven’t found the idea pleasing enough yet.”

“Well that’s a relief.”

She tries not to smile, but he still sees it.

***

Every day, he works with Clarke before meetings, and during meetings, and after meetings. They cover as many eventualities as they can think of for what may happen with the other clans. They have plans and backup plans for how to get others on their side.

When they aren’t looking beyond the borders, they’re micromanaging inside. They come up with better guard rotations that utilize Clarke’s people and members of the hundred who have spent weeks in training. They work out further training programs to put Arkers in various jobs — whether that be farming, building, cooking, healing, or any of the myriad important tasks. 

They don’t allow weapons into the hands of anyone they aren’t certain will be loyal to Trikru, and Bellamy’s okay with that decision. There are a fair number of people on the Ark — starting right in their government — who Bellamy can never trust in another position of authority.

Clarke might be an absolute pain in his ass, but he knows she does the best for her people. She knows when to be harsh, and she knows when to be merciful. The Chancellor had never learned that trick.

The more time he spends with her, the closer they get. They spend late nights awake while discussing possible ways to deal with the influx of people this winter and what it will mean for housing, medical, and food stores. As each hour passes, their exhaustion makes them more and more uninhibited, ultimately leading to making fun of each other and playful teasing. Sometimes he finds himself pushing against her shoulder when she says something especially irksome, and in the same breath he wishes that she would move _closer._

There’s not enough time in the world to assess that errant thought, so he doesn’t. It’s obviously just the product of an overtired brain.

But if she sometimes uses her hand to guide him somewhere as they walk through Xandri, and if he sometimes doesn’t mind and hopes she won’t pull away, well…

It is what it is.

***

He catches the tail end of a fight, and the tension in the air is thick and awkward.

“What happened?” He asks, saddling up next to Clarke. He hadn’t expected her to be in this crowd, considering it seems to be mostly members of the hundred, drunk on Monty’s shitty moonshine.

“I think Raven just dumped Finn,” she says, leaning closer to him so she doesn’t have to speak too loudly. Considering how many people are around, it’s gotten awfully quiet. “But it was all really weird. I thought she’d yell at him, but it was like watching a cold war in real time. Much more passive than I expected from Raven.”

“What _happened?”_ He asks again, more confused now than ever. Raven and Finn were one of the few things that had seemed to survive the initial chaos of landing on an inhabited planet, and he’d thought they were still going strong. They were family — it was impossible to imagine them apart, even if Bellamy wasn’t Finn’s biggest fan.

“He got a little drunk, and then he got a little handsy. It might’ve been fine, except it wasn’t with Raven.”

He clenches his fist. While Bellamy isn’t exactly the picture of propriety, he’s single and only sleeps with people who are willing and old enough to decide for themselves. But there are a lot of younger women in the hundred, and Bellamy will kick Finn’s ass if he was making a pass at someone who wasn’t consenting.

“Handsy with whom?”

She smiles, wiggling her fingers at him in a little wave, and his face pales with realization.

“Don’t worry about me. I’m pretty good at disemboweling people I don’t like, and Finn got an earful on how _exactly_ it works. Also, I think I broke a few of his fingers. He’s just lucky I didn’t have my full kit of knives strapped to me.”

“Clarke, you—” he cuts himself off, running his hand down his face. He looks over at Finn, still standing at the edge of the clearing the group has commandeered. The party has more or less started back up again now that the drama has fizzled. “I know you can take care of yourself, but you should probably leave him fingerless next time he wants to be an idiot.” She smiles at him more genuinely. “You’re okay?” He asks, looking her over. 

“Of course. And I’m better at killing than you are, so no need to ride off in defense of my honor.”

“Noted. Maybe next time Her Highness should keep all her knives on her person, though? For maximum killing potential.”

“I don’t need the knives to kill _Finn Collins,_ and I resent you thinking that that’s the case. But sure, if it’ll help you sleep at night.”

His chest aches for a moment, but in an oddly nice way, like he’s being given an invisible hug. It makes his cheeks heat under his skin.

“Very magnanimous of you, princess.”

“Queen.”

“Princess isn’t really a title — more a state of being,” he says flippantly.

“Thanks.”

He squints over at her. “It’s not technically a compliment.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s for me to decide,” she says with a cheeky smile. He smiles back, always happy to see Clarke at her most relaxed. She’s almost constantly plagued by stress, and it’s nice when she gets to be unapologetically young.

He wants to stick around to tease her more, but Jasper starts throwing up in a bush.

“Duty calls,” he says, nodding over to the actual menace that is Jasper Jordan.

She laughs. “Isn’t leadership fun?”

He makes sure that all the drunkest kids get safely to their beds, and he doesn’t manage to catch up with Clarke again for the rest of the evening.

Raven _does_ manage to catch up with him, and when she forces herself into his tent behind him that night, stripping her tank top off as soon as she’s through the fabric, he doesn’t stop her.

He does ask if she’s sure, and she is. It’s not serious, and it doesn’t mean anything, but his nighttime activities never do. If she wants to use him as a rebound, he can indulge her this once.

***

Raven makes sure to remark _loudly_ the next morning about how hot Bellamy is whenever Finn’s around. Bellamy just rolls his eyes.

It’s so obviously a defense mechanism, but he’s not going to tell her to can it. In the scheme of things, it hardly matters, and no one thinks they’re really together anyway. Raven has spent her entire life loving Finn in one form or another, and while they may or may not reconcile after this, it doesn’t change the fact that she demonstrably doesn’t want Bellamy.

But that doesn’t stop her from sleeping with him nearly every night that week. He’d probably feel a little used, all things considered, but it’s _Raven,_ so he doesn’t mind that she’s trying to fuck away her feelings for someone else.

Clarke does give him a few funny looks at the sight of his bedmate escaping his tent each morning. He never repeats the same person consecutively, and, despite his reputation, he usually doesn’t manage to get laid every single night, either. Often he’s too caught up in work to bother these days.

When Clarke makes a half-joking remark about it, he just brushes it off, saying only, “Raven’s important.”

She raises her eyebrows at him, but doesn’t bother continuing on with that line of inquiry. There’s hardly time anyway — not when it seems like there’s always something new for them to deal with.

Five minutes later, they’re back to arguing over rations, and when Clarke threatens to call for Evela, he smiles.

***

It takes Bellamy a few days to notice it, but he’s pretty sure Clarke is avoiding him.

Not completely — she can’t cut him out totally unless she removes him from her council, and she doesn’t seem keen to do that when Jaha is so eager to fill the position. He still sees her at least once a day, and she treats him more or less the same in those meetings. They fight in front of the others at the table, bickering over next steps for their foreign and domestic concerns, but that’s exactly what they’ve always done.

Only she always seems to run off as soon as their meetings are done, and that’s the unusual bit. Most days previously, they’d spend as much of the afternoon together as possible, trying to sort through the million issues that come from running a whole society, in addition to the other million problems that adding thousands of people to that society brings.

But now, apropos of nothing, she’s always too busy to hang around. He’s not even sure where she runs off too, because they never get the opportunity to talk privately about what’s going on. He’d help her with whatever is keeping her so busy if she’d let him.

That’s what he thought they’d been doing, up till now. It’s her job to govern, and it’s his job to help her and tell her when she’s doing it wrong.

(She calls that _advising,_ on account of the fact that she’s under no obligation to listen to what he says, but most of the time she does, at least in part. He reminds her, cheekily, that it’s okay for her to be wrong sometimes, as long as he’s the one who gets to point it out.)

But now, whatever tasks are taking up her days, she’s handling alone. She isn’t asking for his aid, and it bothers him more than he’d expected.

In the beginning, he would’ve loved to get time away from Clarke. If his entire people’s existence hadn’t been contingent on her goodwill, he would’ve told her to fuck off on the first day. But now…

Now he doesn’t really know what to do with his days if he isn’t trailing behind her to help clean up messes. He’s a leader because she’s given him the space to lead.

She hasn’t taken any of that away either, which is the weirdest part. She doesn’t want him to stop leading, or to stop having a voice.

It seems she just wants him to stop being around her.

***

He wakes up in the night — alone in his little cot, as he has been for the last several nights. He’s not sure what forced him from sleep, as it still seems to be full-dark outside.

A single blue petal sits next to his head on the pillow, and he brushes it away without thought. 

***

“Bellamy—!”

“No.”

“Bellamy, listen.”

“No.”

“You’re not looking at this from the right angle.”

“I’m not looking at this from _your_ angle, Jaha. It’s not the same thing.”

“Clarke said—”

“The queen said, you mean.”

Jaha rolls his eyes.

“Sure, fine. The _queen_ said that I needed to voice all the Ark’s issues through you.”

“No, she said that I was on the council and could be a point of contact for the Ark’s issues. I’m not required to pass along anything that I think is morally questionable or otherwise idiotic.”

“Bellamy, you’re practically a child. Some of us are actually experienced in politics.”

“The politics of the Ark aren’t the same as the politics on the ground, and I’ve been here longer.”

“But we need to take action!”

“We need to not get ourselves into an unwinnable war. You’re going to kill us all, and that’s exactly why you’re not in charge.”

“We have the advantage of guns,” he says emphatically, “and we’re wasting time.”

“They outnumber us at least thirty to one, probably more. I don’t think you realize just how badly we would lose. Anyways, if you’re going to talk about going against the coalition, and against Trikru by association, you better expect to be, at best, exiled.”

“We don’t have to fight all of them if we just make very strategic—”

“I’m going to stop you right there, Jaha. You’re not the Chancellor anymore — not down here. The people elected you to keep us alive in space, and you did that.” He pauses, before making a face. “Sort of did that, anyway. But we’re not in space anymore, and the things you’ve done to us in the name of survival won’t be quickly forgotten. So go join a building group and enjoy a retirement from political life.”

“But I—”

“You. Don’t. Call. The. Shots,” he says shortly. “Do you understand that? You don’t have power anymore, and you don’t know the scope of the situation. Let Clarke do what she does best — _lead.”_

Jaha’s face is pinched, like the idea of letting anyone else make the decisions is reprehensible to him, but there’s not much he can do about it at the moment. Then again, maybe Bellamy will be hearing about an insurrection soon. It’s hard to know what to expect from the once-powerful.

“I have to go. Make sure the foundation on the central building doesn’t get completely fucked.”

With that, he walks off, not waiting for Jaha’s presumably irate response.

God, he wishes he could complain about this to Clarke, but as usual, she’s nowhere around.

Or at least nowhere around Bellamy. His throat tightens up at the thought.

***

Every day his throat starts to get a little bit more sore, and people around him start to worry.

“Maybe you’re getting sick?” Raven asks at dinner. “None of us have ever been exposed to diseases on the ground before. It’s a completely different petri dish from what we had in the sky.”

“You could talk to Lincoln!” Octavia says from beside him. At Bellamy’s sharp inhale-turned-cough, she adds on, “Preferably before you infect the rest of us.”

“I don’t need to talk to your _friend_ Lincoln, O. I’m not sick. I just have a tickle in my throat. It’ll go away on it’s own.”

“You say that now, but when you end up dead from a cold, don’t come crying to us,” Raven says. He wants to point out the logical inconsistency of the statement, but Octavia and Miller are nodding along. Jasper and Monty, who seem to have very little idea of what’s going on and are quite possibly high, just grin and giggle to themselves.

“It’ll be fine,” he grumbles, voice gruff in a way that hardly supports his words. “You’re all worrying for nothing.”

***

“Hey, Bell?” Clarke starts one day. He’s grown so used to her running off as soon as meetings have ended that he’s not sure what to do with her still around. Are they friends, or is this just business?

“Hm?” He doesn’t bother to really speak, his throat still bothering him despite all the bravado.

“I’ve been meaning to mention this for a while, and I kept forgetting. Well actually, at first I thought you’d just say no, but now that the cabins are being built and the—”

“Clarke?” He asks, interrupting her rambling. It’s not like Clarke to be so indirect. Usually everything she does has an aggravating air of superb confidence, even if he’s getting better at seeing through the times when it’s fake. “You’ve been wanting to mention _what_ for a while?”

“There’s an empty cabin near the other council members’. It’s in the center of Xandri, closer to here. You should take it — you’re a part of this too now.”

It’s closer to here, she’d said. To the council room. But the only thing he hears is _it’s closer to her._

Her cabin, only slightly bigger than anyone else’s, is at the heart of the town in an easily defensible spot. The council building they’re currently in is only a few minutes away, and all the members of the council live nearby.

He wouldn’t have to retire every night to his cold tent, made colder each night by the dropping temperatures and his current lack of bedfellows. He could leave later for meetings, and stay longer into the evenings. 

He could be near her. Could find more time to talk to her — to fix whatever this rift is.

“I’d feel bad,” he says instead. “Having a nice cabin while the others are still waiting.”

“The families with young children have all been given emergency shelter, and you know the largest buildings will be done in a matter of weeks. Your job is here, and it’s not going to do you any good to be a martyr about it.”

Part of him wants to say yes immediately, but he stops himself. It would be so easy to turn into Jaha, or Kane, or even Diana Sydney. It’s important that he not abuse his power.

“I’ll think about it,” he decides.

***

Two days later, Clarke is helping him move his meager possessions into his new cabin. He’d like to be surprised that he capitulated so quickly, but he isn’t. Not when Clarke had been so insistent that he be closer.

It doesn’t change the fact that they still haven’t been spending all that much time together, but it does make him value this moment all the more. He only wishes he had a few more things to move, or needed more than one demonstration on how the water pump works.

When she exits the cabin that afternoon, citing a busy schedule of meeting with farmers, he waves her off.

As he watches her pass through the streets of the town, his cough starts up again, chest rattling disconcertingly. Still, it’s not like he’s never been sick before. There’s no reason to panic.

Until he looks down into his hand, where an innocent blue flower petal sits. With another cough, a second joins it.

Because that does seem like something to worry about.

***

The petals are soft in his hands — perfectly formed, as though he’d somehow inhaled the whole flower last night without noticing.

He doesn’t know _why_ he’s suddenly hacking out bits of a plant, but he’s pretty sure that it’s not some earth thing that he’s just adapting to. It’s not like the grounders are constantly spitting up their own personal potpourri.

No, whatever this is, it’s definitely outside the realm of normal.

And it’s not that he doesn’t trust the grounders — or even his own people — but he’s not keen to advertise this anomaly to all of Xandri, so he keeps quiet. It wouldn’t be smart to make a spectacle of himself when he’s acting as the main bridge between the two groups. It’s not like Clarke is going to miraculously start wanting to work with Jaha.

No, projecting strength is the only option right now. No matter how much his chest hurts sometimes, or how worried he is when he _keeps_ coughing up petals, he can’t afford to be weak.

But he does want to know what’s happening.

“Hey O,” he says as he casually sidles up to her. “You’re friends with Lincoln, right?”

“Sure,” she laughs, which he pointedly ignores. _Friends_ is as much as he’s willing to countenance at the moment. “Why? Are you finally going to get checked out for your cough?”

“No. I just wanted to know if he keeps books on medicine. I’d like to learn more about what we might be facing this winter.”

She gives him a strange look. “I’m sure he’d be willing to talk to you about it if you just ask. It’s not like you’re exactly strangers after spending so long on the council together.”

“I know, I know. But I’d like to have a look through the books, too, if he keeps any. Just seems smart to do as much research as possible. And anyway, you know how I am with books.”

He really doesn’t want her to keep pressing. He’s not going to ask Lincoln directly about his petal problem, but he can’t explain that to Octavia. 

It’s probably nothing anyway, but it’s not worth bringing up if it is something. But he’s more than capable of researching on his own to find out if it’s going to be a problem in the future. That way he can keep everything to himself for the time being.

“Yeah, I think he keeps a few books. One of his patients and their diagnoses, which is probably not for general reading, but there are a few on more generalized medicine.”

“Great. I’ll ask him about borrowing one later. Thanks, O.”

***

By the time he manages to get his hands on one of Lincoln’s books — which had been given to him under _strict_ orders to keep it safe — he’s already coughed up enough petals to piece together two or three flowers. He wasn’t intending to keep them, but a steady little pile builds up on the wooden table by his bed. Far from being pretty, it makes him feel the urgency of the situation. Whatever this is, it needs to _stop._

He flicks through the book that night, forced to read by candlelight. Luckily the book has been well-written and well-kept, which means there’s an index to help him along.

Of course, _flowers_ brings up all sorts of things, from allergies to medicines made with various plants. It’s not the most thoroughly sorted index, but it helps him avoid searching through the hundreds of pages.

Eventually, he finds a promising entry. Hanahaki Disease, above which there is a little note — perhaps from Lincoln’s own hand — saying only _trig: Blumachok._

He reads the information about the disease, and his heart sinks to the floor.

 _Hanahaki Disease_ [花吐き病 (Japanese)] _is a rare, soulmate or soulbond-deriven disease in which a victim coughs up flower petals as a result of one-sided love. It ends when the person they have soulbonded to knowingly and genuinely returns their feelings (romantic love only; strong friendship is not enough), or when the plant grows around the heart and lungs, causing the victim to suffocate._

_It can be cured through surgical removal, but when the Hanahaki infection is removed, the victim's memories of their love also disappear._

His first thought is to laugh. There is no way this is real. Soulbonds? Flowers growing in his chest, clawing their way up his lungs? It’s ridiculous — a fairytale tangled up in a medical text.

His second thought is that, if this disease is indeed real, it sounds like there’s a decent chance he’s going to die.


	2. Chapter 2

He’s spiraling.

In fairness, he’d just learned that somebody in the medical community had, at some point before the bombs, decided that this thing in his chest is an effect of having a _soulmate_ who doesn’t love him back, which is going to _kill him._

And there’s absolutely nothing normal about that sentence, so he’s not even going to try to rationalize it.

His breathing gets shallow as he picks at his cuticles, which only ends in bloodied fingers and a coughing fit that he can’t fight.

Like little omens, three petals sit in his hand when he manages to stop long enough to take a breath. A smear of blood sits on one, marring the bright blue color with an ugly red-brown. He brushes them away angrily, horrified by their presence. 

If this is real — if this _thing_ is going to feed off him like a parasite until he’s _dead…_

He doesn’t know what the end of the sentence is, or how to stop what’s coming. He doesn’t even know _who_ his soulmate is, which is kind of shitty, considering they’re going to kill him with neglect.

(Only that’s not true, says the little voice in the back of his head. He knows exactly who these flowers are for, if indeed they are for someone and he’s not just losing his mind. They’re for the person he fights with, the person who he watches out of the corner of his eye whenever possible. They’re for screaming matches and blonde hair and the only thing that’s brought him hope since coming to earth.

And that’s infuriating, because there are a million reasons why he shouldn’t love her. Chief among them is that the existence of this plant seems to mean that she doesn’t love him back.)

Which is why he puts it all out of his mind, taking deep breaths and smoothing his hands along the sheets over and over again. The feeling of the fabric, slightly coarse but warm against his fingers, seems to ground him in reality.

He’s not going to die, because this disease is bullshit. Soulmates have never existed, which means they can’t kill you. There’s some other explanation for what’s happening to him, and it’s completely innocuous. He swallowed a flower at some point after landing, and it’s just coming back up in bits and pieces. It’s nothing more than that.

His lungs constrict again, and he struggles to breathe through the coughs that shake his body.

When he’s done, there are six petals spread between his hand and the bed. He glares at them stubbornly.

It’s fine. It’s all completely, totally fine.

He blows out the candle and lays down, refusing to think about what happens if it’s not fine.

He squeezes his eyes shut, forcing out any hint of the outside world.

***

He wakes up in the morning feeling better than he had the night before. It’s true what they say — things are always clearer in the morning. It was the same on the Ark, and yet it feels all the better when morning comes with fresh air and a sunrise.

He isn’t dying from Hanahaki Disease, because there is simply no reality in which soulmates exist. There were no soulmates on the Ark, which he is certain of. If there had been, the council would’ve undoubtedly weaponized it against them in a way to pacify or punish.

Plus, the existence of flowers, even the kind that grew in chests and fed off a person’s desperation, would’ve been revelatory. The only plants on the Ark were on Farm Station, and they were purely grown for sustenance. Flowers would’ve been impossible to ignore, and impossible to hide.

So obviously if they didn’t exist on the Ark, then soulmates clearly weren’t some kind of weird, pre-bomb practice. And all of that means that he can’t be dying from a disease that doesn’t have a cause.

And therefore it’s all fine. Clarke isn’t his soulmate, which was a stupid thought that only even came up becasuse he was spiraling and looking for answers. He’s not in love with her and he’s not turning into a greenhouse because it’s unreciprocated. He doesn’t love _anyone_ that way, but especially not the queen. That would be ludicrous, and he can only laugh at the idea.

It’s all going to be just fine — starting as soon as he gets rid of this cough.

***

“Hey Lincoln,” he says, waltzing into the medical building with the book in his hand. “Just wanted to come by and return this.”

“You’re done already?” Lincoln asks, head tipped to the side. “I thought you’d have it for a while.”

“I was only doing a preliminary search. Common illnesses we might face in the immediate future. No time now to do a full study. Anyways, since you’re on the council too, I’m sure you will be able to let me know if something’s amiss.”

It’s probably the most delegating he’s done since coming here, but it’s true. He’s no doctor, and no amount of reading through an old, clearly flawed medical text will make him one, so he’s going to have to rely on the experts.

Lincoln just shrugs, putting the book back on his shelf. “Well, it’s here if you need it again.”

“Sure, sure…” he says absently. Then, carefully, a little too practiced, he says, “I did have a few questions.”

“Oh? What about?”

“Nothing serious. I stumbled upon a few sillier sounding diseases while I was flipping through, and I mainly wondered if they were real. I doubt they’ll ever be a present threat, but they caught my attention. I don’t know enough about medicine to have any idea if they’re real.”

“Everything in that book is a documented disease. That’s why they’re in the book in the first place.”

“Sure, of course. Still… porphyria? That one doesn’t seem real.”

Lincoln laughs a little, like Bellamy is funny in an obtuse way. It’s not how he’d like to come across, but this is a reconnaissance mission.

“Yeah, porphyria is real, purple pee and all. It’s a liver disorder, and some people used to think it led to madness, though that doesn’t seem to be the case.”

Bellamy nods along as Lincoln keeps talking about porphyria, acting as though he really cares about why exactly the piss is purple. Next he asks about some abnormality that makes it so people don’t feel pain. Lincoln rhapsodizes about how it sounds nice in theory, but in practice we need pain to protect ourselves.

Bellamy just smiles wanly, wishing the pain in his chest felt necessary.

Finally, he asks, “And there was one other. Hanahaki, I think it was called? That one didn’t make any sense to me at all.”

“Hanahaki?” Lincoln asks, brow furrowed. He racks his brain for a second, clearly knowing the name but not remembering what it’s associated with.

He tries again. “It’s, um… Someone had written _blumachok_ above the entry?”

“Oh!” Lincoln says, before adding on a more somber, “Oh.”

Bellamy panics, not wanting to be found out. He blurts out the first thing that he can think of. “I just thought it was so bizarre. I mean, soulmates, really? That’s ridiculous. Soulmates aren’t real.”

Lincoln purses his lips, his face pinching up. “Soulmates are real, Bellamy.”

“No they’re not. We never had soulmates on the Ark, and the first Arkers were just regular people from pre-bomb earth. If soulmates exist, how did they completely skip over our population?”

“They’re real, but quite rare. There’s a lot we don’t know about soulmates and how it all works, and even the texts from _before_ are vague about the mechanics, but I know they’re real because I’ve seen it happen. Still, no one’s really sure _how_ rare they are exactly, because if you find your soulmate and bond with them, it’s not something that is particularly noticeable to the average onlooker. People only tend to notice if something’s gone wrong and someone comes down with _blumachok_ — uh, Hanahaki.”

“So soulmates basically don’t exist unless they’re causing problems?”

“They always exist, but they’re subtle. Most people probably don’t have a soulmate, so it isn’t an issue. Others find their soulmates and manage to make it work, which means they don’t have to worry about the flowers.”

“And the ones who don’t make it work?”

“They’re the very, very rare group who experience Hanahaki. Like I said, it isn’t something that occurs often.”

“But if it does, you die?”

“Yes, unless the flower is cut out or the love is knowingly reciprocated. We don’t really know how it all works, but it seems like it has a lot more to do with the bond than the soulmates themselves. If two soulmates never bond, no problem. If two soulmates both bond, perfect. But if there’s some imbalance in the bonding...”

Lincoln grimaces, which is enough of an answer for Bellamy on exactly how bad it is.

“And if it’s cut out, you forget the person you love entirely?”

Lincoln nods solemnly. “Yes.” 

Bellamy doesn’t know what else to do, so he lets out a laugh. His life is turning into a cosmic joke.

As his laughter grows, practically gasping for air with how funny it’s all suddenly become, Lincoln’s face grows more grave.

“It’s not funny,” he says seriously. “People die of this disease. You should show respect.”

He’s still laughing, tears in the corners of his eyes and his stomach clenched tightly, when he says, “I’m sorry— I… This is just all so crazy. You have to know how crazy this sounds.”

Lincoln just shakes his head, clearly displeased with Bellamy’s reaction. Maybe he knows someone who died of _blumachok_ once, despite how rare it supposedly is.

“It’s not crazy,” he says simply. “It’s tragic.”

Bellamy sobers, his chest aching. A tickle pricks at the back of his throat from all the laughter, and he can’t afford to spew out petal confetti right now. “Of course.”

He knows exactly how tragic it is, which is why he is so firmly in denial.

He moves towards the exit. “Thanks again, for the book.”

“You’re welcome,” Lincoln says, looking none-too-pleased with Bellamy but too polite to comment on why.

“Alright,” he says, wanting to escape _now_ so he can let out the cough that’s desperate to be released. “I’ll see you at the council meeting.”

“Until then, Bellamy.”

He doesn’t look back as he exits, but luckily he makes it nearly back to his little cabin before the coughing fit starts up.

It takes several minutes to pass, and thirteen petals are in his hands by the time it’s done. 

_Thirteen…_ an unlucky number for sure.

***

Suddenly _he’s_ the one running out the second their council meetings adjourn, not knowing quite how to look Clarke in the eye.

There are about a million reasons why he can never even entertain the idea of being with her. She’s the queen, for a start, and she’s _Clarke._ Clarke, who he’s spent whole nights with in various states of exhaustion. Clarke, who never sits down to eat until she’s certain that everyone else is already eating. Clarke, who tries to listen to all the voices in council meetings without showing favoritism, but who will slightly scrunch her nose up when she hears an opinion she doesn’t like. Clarke, who—

Clarke, who doesn’t know she’s presumably the cause of the Hanahaki that he’s still adamant he doesn’t have. Clarke, who clearly must not love him back.

Not _back_ though, which implies he loves her in the first place — and he definitely doesn’t.

He runs out of another meeting, and when he gets back into his cabin, he can’t help but fall to his knees and retch. No longer contained just to painful coughs, he now has to puke up the petals. They’re too numerous to bother counting. 

He has dozens of them collected since the Hanahaki started, and for the first time, he looks at the pile and feels afraid.

It doesn’t matter if he denies it for the rest of his life, because the rest of his life is growing increasingly short.

He loves Clarke Griffin, Queen of the People of Trikru, and for that he is going to die.

***

He spends the whole next day thinking of logistics. 

There isn’t a lot of use in denial, so instead he needs to plan for what to do next.

There are three options with varying levels of predicted success.

The first is that he accepts the hail mary offered by a surgical removal. 

It’s not a great plan, all things considered. Whether he likes it or not, he is apparently in love with Clarke, and even though that’s thus far been incredibly inconvenient for him, he doesn’t want to forget her entire existence and what she means to him.

But if it was just about love, he might be able to stomach this plan, if only for the sake of survival. He loves Octavia too, after all, and he wants to survive long enough to protect her and give her a future here in Xandri. 

Unfortunately, it isn’t just about love. He has to take into account that erasing Clarke from his mind as a love interest would also have the troublesome effect of making him forget her as a leader — as an _ally._

He trusts her to protect Skaikru, and she trusts him to represent them. If he suddenly forgets everything they’ve worked through together—

At best, he would go back to hating her, antagonizing her until she has to have him thrown out of meetings again. At worst, perhaps they don’t work together at all.

And it’s not that he thinks Clarke would be vindictive towards another Skaikru representative in that instance, but he’s sure that part of their success together is the camaraderie they’ve built up over the last few months. Without that, who knows how they’ll handle the next inevitable crisis.

All of this is to say that option one doesn’t seem very viable, and should only be a last resort.

Option two is no better. Dying, as a practice, is something that he’s inherently predisposed to be against. He doesn’t _want_ to die, especially after all he’s done to fight for survival.

Sure, sometimes he gets tired, weary from all that he’s done and all he’s undoubtedly got left to do. But he’s not ready to give in, even if it would be easy. It’s not in his nature to let go when others still need him.

So dying isn’t in any capacity a reasonable option, especially as it still opens them up to the problems of option one. If he’s dead, Clarke will still need to find a new Skaikru representative, and that still might not lead to a smooth enough transition for the tumult of the coming months.

The trouble is, dying isn’t necessarily a choice; it’s the _default._ If he can’t choose a better option, dying will be the _only_ option.

 _(Only option,_ he laughs sardonically. An oxymoron. Even on death row, he knows how to be a pedantic asshole.)

Dying stays in the running, but it’s not his favorite of the potential outcomes.

The last one is maybe the most obvious, but it also leaves him the most nauseated.

He could tell Clarke the truth.

It would be really embarrassing, especially because she would have to honestly and truly love him for any of this to stop. While he has technically no reason to assume that she couldn’t love him eventually, it also feels weirdly coercive to tell her that she needs to figure out how to manage it or else he’ll wither away to nothing.

Friendship isn’t a strong enough form of returned love, so said the medical text, so he would essentially be forcing her into a soul match. Even if she could find it in herself to truly love him, it would hardly be fair. She’s a powerful and intelligent woman who could have any partner she desires. It would be limiting to say a _queen_ has no right to choose.

So option three is really no better than the other two. He’s back at square one, which is to start spiraling again as he retraces his options.

He spends the whole morning that way, staring at the wooden ceiling. He can hardly feel his limbs, too detached from the world around him as he circles deeper and deeper into panic.

He’s pulled out of the cycle when his door swings open abruptly, hitting the wall opposite with full force.

“Bellamy, are you kidding me?”

“What?” He asks dazedly. He doesn’t know what time it is, or what day it is, or if he had plans he’s missed out on. He’s only barely functioning as a person right now.

“We had a meeting today!” Clarke says, coming into the room without asking. Technically she gave it to him, and she’s the queen of Xandri and all the other lands of Trikru, so she could probably argue that she’s permitted to go wheresoever she pleases. 

“We have a meeting every day.” Not an inspired response, but he’s feeling entirely too disconnected for this conversation. He’s going to _die,_ so how can he be expected to care about anything else right now?

“This one was important,” she huffs, annoyed at his sudden lethargy. She’s probably never taken a day off work in her life.

“They’re all important,” he starts, trying to mitigate the situation so he doesn’t come off as completely unreliable. Then, as though just remembering that they’ve been waiting to hear back from several key players in the other clans, he asks, “Unless something big has changed in our suit?”

She frowns, biting at her bottom lip. “I’ve had a letter from Polis,” she says, not sounding particularly happy. “It’s… it’s good news. The other leaders have taken into account what we’ve said and have spoken to the Commander about how they’d like to proceed.”

“And?” He asks eagerly. This could be it — this could be _peace._ They could secure their spot in the society of grounders and be welcomed. They could have protection and the chance for a future.

“And it sounds like we can make it work. There are details to iron out, and we’ll discuss them at tomorrow’s meeting, but the people of Skaikru will be granted clan status as a subsidiary of Trikru.”

He’s not sure everyone — namely Jaha, Kane, and Pike, who has grown increasingly annoying with each day — will like the idea of being a _subsidiary_ of anything, but Bellamy knows it’s for the best. Trikru has welcomed them with open arms and kind affection. While not every person loves having them around, the overall mood is one of acceptance. They have gained a lot from this merger too — new workers, new skills, new friends, and new people to settle down with. It hasn’t been all one sided, and both groups have been learning the delicate art of getting along. One day, Skaikru might only be a memory — they might all be Trikru, the descendants of those who walked the earth and those who lived among the stars.

It’s a nice thought.

“You don’t want to go over the details now?” He asks, finally sitting up. He’s glad that he’d hidden away his collection of petals, too tired of looking at them all the time. He’ll have to start throwing them out as inconspicuously as he can, but for now, at least Clarke won’t ask any questions.

“No, I—” she looks a little bit nauseous. “We can talk about it tomorrow. You seem like you needed the day off after all. I’ll let you get back to… whatever it was you were doing.”

“Doom spiraling,” he says with a cheeky smile. “Not a lot of fun, but it sure can eat away at an afternoon.”

“Ah,” she returns, looking him over quickly. “I probably know more about that than you’d expect.”

“Leadership really fucks a person up.”

“To be fair, I’m not sure I was ever really unfucked.”

He squints at her before laughing. “Yeah,” he breathes out. “That checks.”

She smiles at him before leaving in the same flurry of motion that she’d arrived in.

He’s not even surprised when he needs to vomit up more flowers upon her departure, instead just letting it happen.

Of course he needs to puke up petals. He loves her — of that he’s entirely, horrendously certain.

***

The next day, he makes sure to be the first person in the council room, wanting to make up for his absence yesterday.

It’s not like he really has anything to prove — for all that he is indisputably the outsider of the group, he’s been welcomed very warmly into the heart of their decision making process. Sure, he’s been thrown out more times than he can remember, but that was mostly his fault. Where it counts, the council has always respected his opinion and given him room to voice his concerns. 

But still, he doesn’t want to be seen as the slacker of the group, and missing a meeting makes him feel like he’s behind on two weeks of Earth Skills assignments that he’ll never manage to make up. Realistically, there’s probably very little to catch him up on, but he still feels like he’s lagging.

The Commander is willing to welcome Skaikru into the clans, and that is the main concern. If that happens, all the rest is just details. 

“Welcome,” Clarke says once the others have trickled in and taken their seats. She looks paler today than normal, like she didn’t sleep very well last night. Her eyes are tired but her hands are clenched into little balls, and that’s how he knows that whatever she’s about to say is something she’s determined to get her way on.

She continues. “Yesterday we began preliminary discussions around Lexa’s offer.” The heads around the table nod, and he looks at them all for a moment each, hoping to figure out exactly _what_ was discussed that he missed.

“If we accept, we will have all that we asked for. The unconditional acceptance of Skaikru into Trikru, where they will work, train, and live as full members of our society. They will settle down here, have families here, and see this as their home to protect as much as it is ours.”

Some of the council members look more wary about the logistics of this than others, but the fact that it’s now something they can delve into with the certain knowledge that their citizenship is assured is an amazing step. Before, every little win they made within these walls felt threatened by what could come from outside, but the Commander’s willingness to accept Skaikru means they’re safe to work towards something long-lasting.

That’s all he wants, like Clarke said. A home. A family. Something permanent to fight for.

“She has helped to sway the leaders of Louwoda Kliron, Trishanakru, and Azgeda, among others. Sangedakru, Podakru, Yujleda, Boudalan, and Floukru have also spoken favorably of this move after careful talks with the Commander.”

The wheels in his head grind to a halt. He’d thought that the three leaders they’d written to had spoken on their behalf to the Commander, bringing her around to the cause. But by Clarke’s account, it happened in the other direction, which means that the Commander wanted this alliance more than the others did.

Which means she might have had to make deals with the other clans to get them on her side.

Which in itself means that the Commander has a greater vested interest in this whole thing than he feels comfortable with.

Why would she want Skaikru in the alliance enough to go to bat for them? For all that he’d threatened to go to Polis himself and speak to the Commander, they’ve never actually met or exchanged letters. She has no real knowledge of who they are or why they’re worth saving.

Either she thinks she can extract something out of Skaikru that’s worth fighting for once they’re in her debt, or…

Or they think they can extract something from Trikru, the only clan with a genuine interest in this succeeding.

He clenches his jaw.

“I will sign this accord on behalf of both Trikru and Skaikru, and with it we will welcome the citizens of the Ark into our clan.”

He holds up a hand. “On behalf of both of our people? I don’t think so, princess. I’m the Skaikru representative, and I want to know what the catch is.”

Nobody bats an eyelash at his insolence anymore.

“No catch,” she says easily. “Your people aren’t being asked to do anything to receive this welcome.”

He looks her over, trying to find the tell. Usually she’d be doing something little to betray her feelings — biting her lip or glancing very occasionally to the bottom left — but her face is impassive now.

“There’s always a catch.”

“Not this time. The Commander doesn’t want anything of us, though she was well within her right to ask for it. She wants Skaikru to understand the importance of the coalition and how you will play into it, but that’s a responsibility, not a price.”

“Then why do you seem like there’s bad news just around the corner?”

Her stony demeanour drops long enough for her to glare at him. “I don’t,” she says petulantly, before remembering where she is. She composes herself again. “There isn’t bad news at all. _But,”_ she says carefully, “this decision came at the same time as a renegotiation of our own treaty with the coalition.”

“Ah, there it is.”

“Shut up, Bellamy.”

He rolls his eyes very overtly in her direction.

“And,” she continues, pointedly ignoring him, “the Commander did make one request of Trikru. It’s an honor, _not a price,_ and it’s something I had thought might be asked of us one day.”

She looks down at the table for a moment, her hands resting before her placidly. She’s tried for the length of her speech to remain passive, but he can tell she’s withholding something.

He waits to hear what the Commander has asked for. It could be anything, really. People who are good enough at spin can make any demand sound like an honor.

“Lexa has asked for my hand in marriage, and I’ve accepted.”

She smiles, looking back up at the people sitting around the table. She looks _happy._

Oh.

_Oh._

***

He races back to his cabin once the meeting is over, his chest heaving the whole way.

He’s going to puke he’s going to puke he’s going to puke he’s—

He retches as soon as he’s in the door, stooped over on his hands and knees. It takes twenty, thirty, forty seconds of painful, grotesque gagging before something makes its way out of his mouth.

When he looks down, there’s a whole flower sitting before him this time, small but beautiful.

It makes him feel ill to look at, perfectly formed and grown from pain.

So there are only two options, then.

Getting Clarke to love him in return had been a longshot anyway, and he tries to not let it bother him that that option is lost to him forever.

She’ll be happy — wife to the Commander, co-leader of the coalition, continuing her work here in Xandri while also getting things accomplished in Polis on a grander scale.

She was always meant for more, a star that could never be eclipsed. To tell her of the Hanahaki would only be to hold her back, and it’s the one thing he refuses to do.

But he can’t bring himself to forget her, either. Can’t bring himself to give up the little pieces of her that he does hold. Her friendship, her respect, her esteem. If he forgets, he won’t know that he’s ever had any bit of her, and that somehow feels worse than having something and falling short of anything greater.

So there’s only _one_ option, then.

He picks up the flower carefully, sighing with the heavy weight of what he knows is to come.

A forget-me-not.

How terribly appropriate.

***

The thing that he can’t really emphasize enough is how little he actually wants to die. 

There’s a difference between being resigned to an unavoidable fate and being accepting of said fate. He’s firmly on the side of displeased resignation.

Still, just because he can’t complete his soulbond but also can’t bring himself to cut out the parasite, it doesn’t mean that he wants to give up other potential avenues for survival.

He’d spent the whole night in a haze, thinking only of the depressing reality of loving someone too late. But then, thinking back to how this all began and the search through Lincoln’s book for answers, he’d started to wonder if there were other solutions that simply hadn’t been discovered yet.

The wedding is in sixteen days, which means they’ll have to set out in a week’s time to begin the trek to Polis. Bellamy, as the head of Skaikru, is invited to attend the ceremony.

And while Lincoln’s book had said that, in some rare cases, people could live with Hanahaki for years before succumbing to the disease, the reality is that most people only live weeks.

It’s already been about two weeks since his very first petal, found innocently on his pillow on an otherwise normal morning. He hadn’t even realized at the time that it hadn’t blown in with the breeze. 

Now that he’s puking up whole flowers, he thinks it only a matter of days or weeks before the root around his lungs starts to tighten beyond his control. One day, probably very soon, he will fight to breathe until there is no fight left.

If he had to set a possible date for that event, he would guess the day of the happy couple’s nuptials.

(He recognizes, in the back of his mind, how _tacky_ it is to die on someone else’s wedding day. Bellamy Blake: drama queen until his final breath.)

But that only leaves him potentially sixteen days to either get his affairs in order, or to find the trick solution that no one had ever figured out before.

Which is why he tries to remember every remedy in Lincoln’s book that he’d briefly seen. It’s probably a fruitless task, but he can’t help it if he wants to exhaust every possible option before accepting death.

There has to be some scheme that circumvents all the bad options. That, after all, is the only way he knows how to survive. He scraped by and gamed the system on the Ark for years, and the idea that there isn’t some secret way to flout the rules of a soulmate flower just seems wrong. If he’s smart enough, he can figure it out.

Eventually he lands on mithridatism.

Like everything else he does in life, it’s a terrible idea that he’s one hundred percent going to try.

***

_Mithridatism_ [noun] _is the practice of protecting oneself against a poison by gradually self-administering non-lethal amounts._

Technically mithridatism is about trying to immunize yourself against poison by acclimating your body to it, which isn’t really his goal. But, if he can take small enough doses of poison to kill the plant without killing himself, maybe he can live to see the next full moon.

(Plus, there’s the added bonus of being immune to poisons if things in Polis go _very_ poorly. Probably at least one clan there would like to see him dead, so this solution could really be a win-win.)

Presumably no one has yet been stupid enough to test the hypothesis that poisoning oneself could kill a Hanahaki plant, or else they died in the attempt, but he doesn’t have a lot of other options at the moment, so it seems like a bet worth taking. His line of thinking is, it’s the _removal_ of the plant that makes you forget your soulmate. In this case, he’d be killing the plant without taking it out, allowing it to wither away inside of him, which might allow him to keep his memories and his life.

The trouble, naturally, is that he knows very little about earth poisons.

It takes an awkward and potentially treasonous conversation with an herbalist to get the answers he needs, which he passes off as something required for the Skaikru doctors’ knowledge about the plants on earth and the dangers they present.

The poor man probably thinks he’s trying to poison Clarke or something, which in all fairness would’ve been on the table as a viable solution to the Trikru / Skaikru problems from only a few months ago.

Luckily, the plants that the man points out are both fairly distinctive looking: a bright orange flower called _feisbona_ and a mushroom-like plant that is rather incorrectly named _wanlibluma._

After their next meeting, which is mostly just a discussion of the wedding and what gifts Trikru is obligated to supply when they are already providing one of the brides, he sneaks off into the woods to seek out the two plants.

The _wanlibluma_ is surprisingly easy to find, a group of the mushrooms growing only a few hundred meters from the walls of the camp. The _feisbona,_ in comparison, is more difficult to locate, and he spends much of the remaining sunlit hours looking for the orange petals.

Eventually, as he’s stumbling along the edge of a little brook, lungs still aching from his most recent Hanahaki-related break, he finds a cluster of the _feisbona_ plants. Though they are only poisonous if ingested, he picks them carefully, not wanting to take any unnecessary risks.

Well, any risks besides the obvious.

Satchel filled with both poisons, he returns to Xandri, hoping no one will stop and ask him what’s in his bag. He’d hardly have a good excuse for carrying so many dangerous plants.

In his cabin, he boils a weak tea from a single _feisbona_ petal, drinking only a few drops. Then he cuts off a small corner of one of the _wanlibluma_ mushrooms, which he swallows quickly.

It only takes a few minutes to start sweating, his stomach rolling uncomfortably. His vision doubles before going hazy all over, and he’s glad to be alone. Carefully, so as not to fall into a heap on the ground, he lays down onto his bed.

His head throbs and his eyes water as the pain travels through him. If it works, it’ll all have been worth it — every agonizing minute will be the greatest gift.

It’ll mean not losing his life.

It’ll mean not losing Clarke.

Clarke, the most important— 

The person he— 

_Clarke._

Her name is the last word on his lips before he passes out from the pain.

***

When he wakes up, his mouth is dry and tastes bitter. The light has faded outside his window, and he’s certain he must’ve missed dinner.

He doesn’t bother looking for food. He needs to sleep if he plans to attend the next day’s council meeting.

It’s not like passing out was in any way restful.

***

The next morning, he can hardly bring himself to eat, his stomach already tight from what he has done to his body, and what he will continue to do.

He forces down the most bland breakfast he can find after his morning puking session. More often that not now, whole flowers are coming up instead of lone petals. He wonders if that’s the last step before the end.

When their council meeting lets out, Clarke’s cheeks flushed from the conversations surrounding her marriage, he returns to the privacy of his cabin in order to poison himself all over again.

He sweats, and feels ill, and aches all over, but when he passes out this time, he’s only unconscious until dinnertime. Though he isn’t hungry, he’s glad not to be missing another meal. It would only make people ask questions.

He carefully cleans himself up as best he can, not wanting anyone to know what he’s been doing. 

When he arrives at dinner, muscles screaming and stomach in knots, the pressure around his lungs only growing tighter, he smiles at his friends. They laugh and joke and talk of the many happy days to come.

They don’t know anything, and he doesn’t want to tell them.

***

The schedule is tight for the wedding, but Clarke assures the council that she wishes to have this all sorted as soon as possible. It is important diplomatically that they have the protections offered by the union sooner rather than later, but Clarke also loudly states in their meetings that she is keen on a personal level to _make the marriage official._

He knows that she has spent much of her life aware in a vague way that she could one day become partner to the Commander, and so he tries not to be too bothered by the eagerness she gives off at the whole idea. 

Lexa, he’s heard, will make for a very good partner, firm but loving. They will rule over all the clans together. That’s a role that Bellamy knows Clarke deserves.

And she deserves to be happy too, even if her happiness is making him miserable.

It’s not even just because he’s dying, though it’s almost impossible to ignore that now. It feels harder to take a deep breath every day, his lungs always feeling like he’s just finished a long run. The poisons, too, are leaving their mark. Far from killing the plant inside him, they seem to only be sapping away his own life. The dark bags under his eyes grow, and his skin seems to become more sallow.

But for all that, it’s the heartache that bothers him the most. 

It’s not that he wants Clarke to be unhappy, or thinks she should only be happy if she’s with him. It’s just that he _gets it_ now — gets how they can be soulmates, of all the ridiculous things.

He gets how they can argue, and fight, and annoy, but still respect, and care, and _love._ He gets that there’s no one he’d rather be with, and there’s no one he trusts more. He gets her fears as queen and also why she’s exactly the right person to have the job.

He gets her. He _gets_ her, and yet—

It isn’t enough, somehow, to have someone whose soul is the complement to your own. It isn’t enough if there isn’t a genuine, all-consuming love there on top of the friendship and respect.

He wonders if that’s what Lexa will be for her. If she’s going to one day be the all-consuming love of Clarke’s life. If somehow, she already is.

Lexa is exactly the kind of leader that Clarke could so easily love. A force of nature, who single-handedly brought the clans under the rule of the coalition.

They will be unstoppable together.

Bellamy won’t live long enough to see any of that, of course, but he tries to put aside the bitter knowledge that he’s lost her love so that he can focus on the positives. She’ll get the future that she deserves, even if it comes at a cost.

It’s not like she’s known him for very long anyway. His death will be something that she mourns and then forgets. He is a chapter in her story, and that’s fine. He is happy to have been here at all.

But still, sometimes he wishes she wasn’t so damn happy about it all.

***

“Bellamy, I need you to speak during this announcement. End of story.”

It’s not the end of the story, if only because she’s already said that at least twice over the course of the fight.

“Why, Clarke? This is your marriage, and these are your people. They don’t need to hear from me.”

“Thousands of them are _your_ people,” she reminds him. “And they listen to me specifically and in some cases only because you listen to me. They will want to hear your voice in this.”

He frowns at her, trying not to be obvious as to why exactly he’s suddenly so shy in the face of a crowd.

“Please,” she says, looking at him with real concern. “Your people are still so new here, and it’s been a hard few months. Having the queen leave to get married during a turbulent time is new and probably frightening. People will worry what it means for them exactly, even if it’s being done with their best interest in mind. Reassure them, like you always do, and we won’t have a crisis on our hands.”

“Fine,” he grumbles. “But I still can’t believe you waited until two days before we leave to announce that you’re getting married at all.”

“My people won’t be terribly surprised, and we needed to have the details finalized before we made any grand announcement. But now that things are sorted — we need to let them know.”

He just nods, throat tight. He’s not sure if its the roots tightening further or just the emotional onslaught that he’s been trying to stave off.

Twenty minutes later, under the cool autumn sun, Clarke steps out before her assembled people, Bellamy and the other councillors behind her. She wears her green cape, blonde hair sweeping around her shoulders.

One of his favorite things about Clarke is how completely at ease she always is with her position. Most grounders wear intricately woven braids in their hair as a mark of wealth, power, or war prowess. But Clarke’s hair is always loose around her shoulders, like she knows she is a strong, capable warrior and therefore has no need to prove it.

She walks confidently before the people, stopping where they can all see her upon the dais.

“Xandri! I come before you today to announce a great victory for our people — not on the battlefield, but this time at the heart of the coalition in Polis! The Commander, Lexa kom Trikru, has selected your queen as her consort and partner!”

The crowd cheers loudly at the words, looking up at their leader like she is something a little bit otherworldly. For all that she comes to them to help while they’re doing their work or to chat over a meal, she still holds something of the divine in her. A person, but also something so much greater.

He’s glad that they can see that in her, too. Clarke has always been something so much more in his eyes.

He can see the way the group of Arkers near the back seems to collectively shift. The news is not so welcome to them, and they’re worried.

He smiles in their direction, hoping to ease their nerves.

Clarke continues speaking, outlining that she will continue ruling in Xandri, splitting her time between Polis and her own capital. While she is away, Anya, Clarke’s second and another member of the council, will communicate with Clarke and facilitate decisions on her behalf.

Clarke then calls Bellamy forward, and he takes the deepest breath he can manage before stepping towards her.

He looks out to the assembled people, glancing at individual faces. He can see Miller and Raven in the back, standing near Octavia and Lincoln. Kane and Jaha are there too, looking not at all pleased.

“I know some people — especially those from Skaikru — might be worried about this turn of events. But let me assure you,” he stops, swallowing hard as a petal tickles the back of his throat. “Let me assure you that this wedding is a great and welcome event, both for us and for our hosts. This alliance solidifies our place here in Xandri, granting us status within the coalition. We no longer need to fear for the future, and we can begin working together as a joint community, expanding and building a town that will be the envy of all the clans.”

He looks over to Clarke, trying not to focus on how pretty she looks or how happy she seems to be as she watches him espouse the virtues of her upcoming nuptials to someone who isn’t him. She smiles gently at him with a little nod.

Looking back out at the Skaikru portion of the crowd, he sees some people visibly coming around to the idea, whispering to their neighbors about what this means, while others remain wary, body language hostile.

The root tightens around his heart, squeezing uncomfortably as he forces out his final words. “We owe the queen a great debt for making such a fortuitous and gracious match on our behalf. It will be an honor to see her marry the Commander.”

The words are a greater poison on his tongue than any bit of _wanlibluma_ he could possibly eat.

When Clarke’s closing remarks finish, he’s the first off the stage, only making it to an empty alley behind a row of cabins before he’s puking again, petals coming up in painful spurts a dozen at a time.

He drags his fingers idly through the petals when he’s finished, almost confused by the silky softness under his fingers. They should be thorns. They should be half rotten and covered in maggots. It feels somehow worse to be killed by something so beautiful—

Something so reminiscent of the bright blue of Clarke’s eyes.

When he takes his dose of poisons later that afternoon, he can’t help but wonder why he doesn’t just take a little more. What is the point of waiting? The Hanahaki is only going to become increasingly painful, killing him slowly as the parasite grows out of control.

The poison could end it all in one go.

Still, he carefully portions out the dose. He knows he will wake up later in the day, tired and sick. And, if he’s being honest with himself, he knows it’ll have no effect on the plant that he’s so desperate to kill.

He takes them anyway.

***

The day before he’s set to leave for Polis, Octavia comes barging in, intent on telling him something juicy about Monty and Harper, as far as he can tell.

And that might’ve been fine, if she didn’t catch him midway through trying to cough up a particularly stubborn flower. It gets caught in the back of his throat, and his body shakes as he tries to force the stubborn thing out.

He doesn’t even notice her enter the room until she’s on the ground next to him, her hand thumping against his back to dislodge whatever’s choking him.

When the flower eventually falls to the empty floor in front of them, she gives him a worried look.

“Bellamy?” She asks warily, not even needing to voice a question.

“It was an accident?”

It’s the worst excuse of all time, but for all the work he’s put into hiding his condition, he hadn’t given any thought as to what he’d say if anyone saw him midway through an attack.

 _“What_ was an accident exactly?”

“Uh… I swallowed a flower?”

“Try again.”

He just shakes his head, hand going to his throat as though he can massage away the persistent ache.

“I don’t have an answer.”

“Is it…?” She stops, swallowing heavily. He’d only really worried about looking ridiculous in front of Octavia, but her reaction unnerves him. Her voice drops to a whisper. “Is it _blumachok?”_

“What?” He asks, surprised at the question. There isn’t a logical reason for a member of the hundred or anyone from the Ark to know about _blumachok,_ the grounder name for Hanahaki.

Except for Lincoln.

“Is it _blumachok?”_ She asks again, voice grave. “Are you— are you dying?”

“How do you know about that?” He deflects, sounding almost bored.

“Lincoln’s mentioned it a few times. He seemed worried. I thought someone might’ve had it, but I didn’t think it was _you._ How could you tell _Lincoln_ but not me?”

“I didn’t tell Lincoln!” He says quickly, before realizing that he’s just outed himself. “Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t tell Lincoln, or anyone else. I didn’t want anyone to know.”

“But you do have it?” Her eyes are wide as she looks at him, and he can’t help but see the little girl who he wanted to give the world to. The little girl who relied on him for every comfort. She’s been hardened by so many things since then: the death of their mother, lockup, the ground. But he can still see the reflection of the girl she once was, and he so desperately doesn’t want to leave her. Octavia needs and deserves a family.

“Yes,” he manages to say, the word filled with all the pain he’s felt since he realized what was coming.

“But Lincoln said there’s a cure!” She grabs at his hand. “He can do an operation, and they’ll cut the flower out. With the help of some of the Ark’s technology, you’d be fine! We can tell them immediately — have it done away with tomorrow!”

He frowns. “I can’t.”

“What do you mean you can’t? Of course you can, Bell. There’s no other option.”

“I can’t do it,” he whispers, overcome suddenly by the grief that seems to follow a step behind him these days. “I can’t— I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but _I can’t—”_

His breathing gets ragged, and for the first time, it has nothing to do with the plant constricting his lungs.

“I can’t do it,” he repeats. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I—”

He doesn’t even notice that he’s crying until his hands come up mechanically to wipe at his cheeks.

“I don’t want to leave you,” he breathes out, the words barely audible.

“Bell, stop— stop.” She moves in front of him, taking his face into her hands and drawing it up so that he can’t escape her gaze. “You don’t have to leave me. You don’t have to die.” Her lip trembles, but she doesn’t break eye contact.

“I can’t, I’m sorry,” he says, sounding like a stuck record, unable to think anything else. “I’m sorry. I thought it was just about the problems that forgetting her would cause — I’d lose everything since we came to the ground, and I can’t afford to forget all of that. But the truth is,” he says, tears making their way silently down his cheeks, “that I just can’t bring myself to erase her. I can’t do it. I can’t, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, O.”

She moves his head so that it’s resting on her shoulder, hands coming up around his back to hold him to her.

“Is it Clarke?” She asks quietly. “Is she the one you love? The one who did this to you?”

He gasps into the skin of her neck. “I did this to me,” he argues. “I did this. It’s my fault. She doesn’t know.”

“Bellamy, you have to tell her,” she says hotly. It’s clear she wants to fight, wants to pull back and glare at him, but she keeps her arms around him all the same. Time is running out for moments like this. “Fight for her. If you refuse to forget her, then make her love you back.”

“I can’t.” There’s an agony to voicing these words aloud. He’s known for days now that his love is one-sided, destined to end in his death, but it’s painful to admit to someone else. “I can’t force her into something in the hopes that it’s enough to save me. She’s _happy,_ O. She’s going to marry the Commander and rule at her side. I can’t steal her future.”

“She’s stealing yours!”

“Not on purpose!”

“Bellamy,” she groans, exasperated by his annoying code of ethics. “You have to fight for her. She’s your soulmate — isn’t that the whole point?”

He moves back, drawing himself away from her, though her hands stay on his upper arms.

His gaze settles in a corner of the room, blurring in a way that’s almost soothing. If the world around him isn’t real, then this could all be just a bad dream.

“That’s the thing about soulmates, I guess. I don’t have to be hers just because she’s mine.”

A shiver runs down his spine, and he tries to hold in the cough that he feels waiting in his chest.

The tone of complete resignation in his words makes Octavia’s own tears finally escape, and she tightens her grip on his arms.

“Please, Bell. I— I don’t want to be here without you.”

Another little sob bubbles out of him at her pleas. There’s nothing he can do for her — nothing to make this easier.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I’m so sorry, O. You don’t deserve this.”

“You don’t deserve this. Can’t you see that?”

“It’s not about what I deserve.” He smiles sadly. “I can’t stop it. Nothing I’ve done has made any difference. It’s going to happen whether I deserve it or not. I’d just like to leave knowing I’ve done the best that I could.”

She hiccups, not wanting to imagine him leaving at all.

“Octavia,” he says quietly, but with a heavy sort of importance. “Please, I know it isn’t fair to ask this of you, but— I need you to look after them.”

“Them?”

“All of them. Skaikru. Trikru. God, maybe even Clarke — I don’t know. Everything I’ve done has been to give our people a future, and I trust that Clarke will do what she can to honor that. But will you look after them? When I can’t anymore. It’s my biggest regret — not being here to help you all.”

“I don’t know how,” she whispers.

“‘Course you do,” he smiles. “Just watch out for them — make sure they’re being cared for. You won’t have to do it alone. I’m sure Raven and Monty and Miller and all the others will help you. Lincoln, too, I guess.”

He considers it a fairly big concession to add in Lincoln’s name, a peace offering he wouldn't give if this wasn’t basically a deathbed confessional. At the end of all of this, though, he wants to know that Octavia will still be happy. If that’s with Lincoln, well… he can’t really begrudge her that. She deserves to have people who will look after her, too.

It just can’t be Bellamy who does that anymore.

“And you won’t try to fight it?” Her voice is still low and anguished.

He sighs. “I don’t know how much there’s left to fight. I can’t remove the flower. I can’t stop the wedding that’s going to save our people and make Clarke happy. I can’t stop loving her. And I already tried to kill the flower without removing it, but that seems to only be killing me faster instead.”

Her eyebrows scrunch together in alarm. “What? How?”

He looks down, suddenly ashamed of what he’s done. He isn’t really sure why — after all, he was poisoning himself in an attempt to _live,_ not to end it all faster. But still, he’s uncomfortably aware of the dangerous lengths he’s gone to, unbeknownst to anyone around him.

“Gave myself small doses of poisons. Not enough to kill me,” he adds quickly, seeing her expression. “Just a little bit — in the hopes that it might kill the plant. I thought maybe if it stopped growing but was still unequivocally _there,_ then maybe I could game the system. Not lose my memories but keep my life. I guess there’s no work around for this though. You have to choose.”

“And you’re choosing to die?” She asks again, like she’s trying to respect his wishes but she also thinks he’s fucking lost it.

“I’m choosing to live my life honestly, even if I’m only being honest with myself. If I forget Clarke — forget everything since we came to the ground — I think there would always be a piece of me missing. You could try to tell me what I’ve forgotten, but the person that I’ve become _because_ I knew and loved Clarke would be gone, and there’s no way to get that back.”

He looks down, wringing his hands anxiously. He doesn’t want her to think she’s not important enough to live for, because she is. It’s just that he needs to feel he’s worth living for, too.

“And I’m afraid,” he adds nervously. “To start over, and then to spend my whole life not knowing why everything just feels a little bit wrong. Why I feel like I could be something more if only I could remember a part of myself that I’ve never met. I’m so scared to die — so scared to see it coming closer every day — but I’d still rather die as myself than live as half a person.”

Octavia nods, brushing at the tear stains on her cheeks. “I understand. Or I want to understand, anyway. I don’t think I could handle reverting my brain back to being the girl under the floor again. No matter how many years I lived after, I’d always wonder about these months and the influence they had on me. The person they turned me into.”

He laughs through his tears, his hand coming up to cup her jaw. “They’ve turned you into the best person, O. I’m so proud of you. Mom would be proud, too. You’re the greatest parts of us, living on after we’re gone and thriving on the earth. You get to make your own destiny now.”

She drops her forehead to his. “I’d like it better if you were still here to be part of it.”

“I’ll always be part of it, even if I’m not around. My sister, my responsibility. I’ll be the nagging voice in your head making you second guess every questionable decision until you do the right thing,” he teases.

“I’m going to miss you so much. I don’t know how not to have you in my life.”

“The same way you do everything, I guess. A day at a time, and with the stubbornness that I’ve come to expect from Octavia Blake.” He lets out a deep breath, her tears still running down her skin until they meet his thumb. “I hope you know I’d never leave you for anything less important than this. I would give anything to be here to protect you, but if I’m not myself…” He trails off, before trying to smile again. “You’d get so tired of dealing with fresh-off-the-Ark Bellamy again. I’d never leave you alone, always trying to protect you from a too windy day.”

She closes her eyes. “I love you, big brother.” Then, with a laugh, she says, “Even when you’re over protective.”

“I love you, too.”

“I’m not mad at you for leaving. I’m mad at the earth and soulmates and flowers. I’m mad that this is going to take you away from me. But I’m not mad at you.”

“Thank you,” he whispers. He didn’t know how much he needed to hear those words until they were in the air between them, taking away much of his fear.

Octavia doesn’t deserve this, and she will mourn, but eventually she can still live a full and happy life.

“I might take a swing at Clarke, though. After you’re gone, of course. Have to be respectful of your wishes while you’re still here.”

“Don’t you dare,” he warns teasingly. “You’ll end up in a war from eight different directions.”

“Might be worth it,” she grumbles, and he pulls away a bit to glare at her. “Fine. I’ll look out for her, like you asked. I have a feeling, after you’re—” she chokes on the word, _“—gone,_ that she’ll be looking out for me, too. Whether she knows it or not, you mean a lot to her. She’s going to take this hard.”

“I know. But I know she’ll be able to handle it, just like you will. She’ll have Lexa, and you’ll have Lincoln and all our friends. Neither of you will be alone.”

“And you’re still planning to leave for Polis tomorrow? For the wedding?”

He presses his lips together in a tight line, the mere thought of the wedding making the root tighten uncomfortably. 

“Yeah, I’m still going. I don’t think—” his voice wobbles, but he stops to gather himself. “I don’t think that I’ll come back from the trip — not a week there and a week back, with a few days of festivities in between. Things have been progressing too fast for that.”

She bites her lip at this news, but nods her head solemnly. “Then I’m coming with you.”

“What? No, that’s crazy, O. There’s no reason to put yourself through that.”

“I know it’ll be… it’ll be really bad. Slow, and painful, and heartbreaking. But you shouldn’t be alone. And anyways, I couldn’t send you off tomorrow morning knowing you won’t be coming back. So I’m coming too.” She takes his hand in hers, and he squeezes her fingers. “You’ve been there for basically every second of my life — you were the only thing that made the first sixteen years worth living. And now I want to be with you for as many of the remaining seconds of your life as possible.”

He pulls her in for a hug, his arms squeezing as tight as he can.

He isn’t sure how to let her go. Not after he’s spent every minute since her birth doing everything in his power to protect her.

Dying might be the first selfish thing he’s done when it comes to Octavia.

“I love you, O.” Her hands move up and down his back as his chest shakes with the wave of emotions he’s feeling. “I love you.”

“I know,” she says in his ear. “I won’t forget.”

They don’t pull apart for a long time, and when they do, it’s only to build a blanket fort on his floor so he can tell her her favorite stories one more time. They don’t leave his little cabin for the rest of the day.

Outside, the final preparations are made for the journey to Polis. For the marriage of a Queen and a Commander.

But inside, they don’t let any of reality’s harsh truths touch them. Not for this one final day in Xandri, the place where they’d found a home.

***

Outside, a nervous figure walks towards the cabin, hand outstretched to knock.

Then laughter rings out softly from inside the space, two voices sounding happy, and loving, and completely comfortable.

And the hand retreats, door untouched.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy Blake and Jude Duarte teaming up to poison themselves and take down their enemies? We'd love to see it. 
> 
> I have to admit, I'm not a huge Octavia stan by any means, but their goodbye scene was the first time I've ever gotten teary-eyed while writing. 
> 
> This story is nearly complete, and I am splitting my time between writing the final scenes and writing Christmas fics. As of now, it's still three chapters, but if things get CRAZY, I might split the last one in two.
> 
> Comments will make me very happy :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning, this is not the final chapter you were promised.
> 
> The last chapter was getting quite long and still has a bit to go, so I decided to split it in half so you could get a quicker update. This means that the story is now four chapters (and if I try to add a fifth someone needs to immediately kill me). The last one will hopefully be here by the first week of January, but ideally sooner than that. 
> 
> I've been busy with two Christmas oneshots for the last few weeks, so keep an eye out for those dropping in the next few days! They are both probably happier than this update (probably... because it's still me we're talking about here.)

“Okay,” Clarke says early the next morning as she looks out over the assembled party. Traveling to Polis for the wedding of two leaders is no light task; of the fifteen thousand or so people living in Xandri, at least six hundred of them will travel in the Queen’s retinue.

Bellamy glances over at her, but her eyes continue doing sweeps of the people before her. 

“We have a week before the wedding, though it should only take at most five days to make the trip. Our party will stay for a week following the festivities to carry out trade deals. Anya, my second, will be in charge here for the duration of our trip and at any point when I’m not in Xandri. If something is to happen to me while I’m away, Anya will assume power.”

Bellamy shoots her a look, but everyone else seems unconcerned with the proclamation.

As they mount their horses — which Bellamy still _really_ isn’t comfortable with, but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t try — he decides to ask.

“Is this a trap?”

“What?”

“The wedding. The traveling.”

“Why do you ask?”

“Just didn’t expect that your last words here in Xandri as an unmarried woman would be what happens if you die. Is that a big concern?”

“It’s always best to be prepared,” she says easily, digging her heels into her horse’s side just enough to spur him on. “If I die without a succession plan, things could get messy quickly. It would put everyone here, including your people, in terrible danger.”

“But that’s just a background thing, right? Like we’re not actually worried that this ends in a massacre I’m hoping? I don’t know enough about coalition politics to decide if I should be worried or not.”

“The Commander wouldn’t pull a trick, I don’t think. She was Trikru once, too, and although her clan allegiance is no longer a chief concern, I don’t think she’d provoke war with us. But it’s always a bit of a gamble when all the leaders are together.”

He nods, but he feels numb at the thought. 

If the clan leaders are going to hate anyone from Xandri, he doesn’t think it’ll be the people of Trikru.

He could be leading Octavia, Miller, Raven, and several others who chose to join straight to the slaughter.

Looking over at Clarke, he can’t help but pray that nobody tries to take out their anger towards Skaikru on her. She has done nothing but try to help him, and he couldn’t bear it if this ended in her death.

He wonders, idly as they ride through the gates and into the open wilderness, how it is that the planning for her wedding can feel so much like her funeral.

After all, he’s the one wasting away.

***

“So, Clarke,” Octavia starts, riding at the front with the Queen, Bellamy, and Lincoln. Hundreds of people are walking or riding behind them in a long column. “Are you excited to get married?”

Bellamy knows Octavia is doing this in the hopes that Clarke will deny it — maybe even that she’ll declare her undying love for Bellamy like some ridiculous story. But he can’t help but wish that Octavia wouldn’t try. The answer isn’t something he wants to hear.

Octavia grew up on a strange mixture of greek tragedies and pre-bomb romantic comedies. The trouble is, she’s hoping that this scenario is the latter, whereas he already knows it to be the former.

Lincoln shoots her a look, like he doesn’t think Octavia should’ve been quite so chummy with the Queen, but Clarke just tips her head to the side in thought.

“It’ll be different,” she says diplomatically. “I think anyone who assumes that things will be easy is shortsighted — being away from my own lands for a significant period of time will make things more challenging. But this wedding provides a lot of important benefits and protections, so it’s worth it.”

Octavia scrunches up her nose. “That’s not a very romantic answer.”

She gives Bellamy a long look which he pointedly ignores.

Clarke laughs. “The political side of a match like this is never particularly romantic.”

“But do you _like_ her?”

Lincoln’s eyes go wide. Octavia’s penchant for impertinence is second only to Bellamy’s.

“Lexa is … a force. I’ve met her many times, though I don’t know that I’d say we know each other very well as people. She tries, though. Tries to be good, tries to do what’s best for as many of us as possible. It’s a hard job, and she’s the first Commander to bring us together under one banner like this so successfully. I respect her. I think love could grow from that.”

He thinks of his own love, delicately nurtured from respect and disdain and anger and arguments and affection.

The part of him that wants to be a good man, gracious in defeat and death, tries to hope that she will find that same kind of love growing between herself and Lexa.

The lovelorn part of him wishes that it wouldn’t, even if it’s not a fair thing to think.

“Does she like you?”

“Yes, I think. Enough to make herself the pawn in a marriage alliance, certainly, but I think it’s more than that. She’s always been rather partial to me in the past. I don’t know how much she feels she truly knows me either, but whatever impression I’ve made must’ve been good enough to stick.”

“So you don’t mind that you got roped into an arranged marriage with someone you don’t love?”

 _“Octavia!”_ Bellamy says, appalled at her complete lack of tact. 

“Don’t let the Commander hear you framing it like that,” Clarke says easily, but with a hint of real warning. “But part of leadership is sacrifice. I know my duty.”

 _Part of leadership is sacrifice._ Something Bellamy’s had to learn in a painful, visceral way.

If it wasn’t for the alliance that will save his people, maybe he wouldn’t have had to be such a coward about his feelings.

But better to have him die than unleash some war against Skaikru because they couldn’t find another way to gain the Commander’s protection.

“Duty,” Octavia says drily. “Sounds awful.”

Bellamy turns to glare at her finally. He doesn’t want to be angry with her — not when he knows she’s doing this as a part of her grieving process. Still, it’s easy to be irritated with her actions.

“We all have our duties,” he says, tone hard. He wants to put this matter to rest.

Octavia’s eyes harden for a moment, clearly just as annoyed with him as he is with her. But then, like a curtain falling away, they turn sad. She murmurs out a low apology before turning back to Lincoln to talk about their horses.

When he looks back over at Clarke, she has her eyes firmly trained on her hands on the reins, knuckles white.

They don’t speak again for the remainder of the day’s ride.

After spending most of the day trying not to cough up a bouquet, he has to run off as soon as they dismount to puke. 

When he’s finished, he takes a little bit of his _wanlibluma._ It would’ve been too conspicuous to brew himself _feisbona_ tea each day when any grounder would recognize the plant on sight, especially since he’s nearly certain that the poisons aren’t doing any good.

Still, he mechanically chews and swallows the little piece of mushroom, hoping it will finally be the piece that saves him.

It won’t, but this ritual is all he has left.

After this, there is only complete acceptance of the end, and he’s not quite ready to go gently.

He knows he’d regret it if he didn’t at least try to delay things. Octavia deserves that much.

The _wanlibluma_ makes him feel sick to his stomach, but he doesn’t pass out this time, so at the very least it seems like this won’t be the thing that kills him.

And if he somehow does live, he’ll have a pretty neat party trick to show off with his poison-averse body.

***

The next two days are much the same as the first, but they make surprisingly good time on the road considering how slow a group of this size has to move.

It’s good news, of course. It means the queen won’t miss her own wedding, which would probably cause a diplomatic incident.

But Bellamy feels a little more out of breath with every step his horse takes. Each kilometer they travel just brings him closer to the end of the road.

It takes a toll on his mood, and by the third night he’s sulking in front of a fire, eating some of the rations he’d stocked in his pack. Octavia, having long since given up trying to make conversation with him, has moved away to the treeline in order to talk to Lincoln.

And even that pisses him off, because a part of him is bitter that he has to be _happy_ for his sister’s sudden new crush, since it’s the thing that might keep her together after he’s _dead._

He wants to be able to have his normal, overprotective reaction to the whole situation, but that will only strain his last days with Octavia and potentially drive a wedge between her and someone who can help her.

It’s frustrating to feel like every decision he makes now has to be with the knowledge that any minute could conceivably be the last, the sand trickling away so quickly in the hourglass. He just wants to have free range over his ridiculous, unfair, _human_ emotions when it comes to these situations, but it feels like doing so would be a disservice to the people he’s leaving behind.

No one besides Octavia even knows he’s dying. If he starts throwing a fit now, nobody will understand. It’ll just make him look like a petulant child, which will ultimately reflect badly on his people.

He stays silent, brooding in his seat.

He sleeps fitfully that night. Before, he thought he could feel the plant growing around his lungs, but that was nothing compared to now. It circles around his chest cavity, probably a few times at least, before nudging it’s way towards his esophagus. He isn’t even sure how that works scientifically, but he can feel it sitting there, heavier each morning. It never crawls up his throat the way the petals do, but he can’t help but wonder if that’s the next step.

He probably should’ve read Lincoln’s book more thoroughly.

The next morning, the sky is grey and overcast. He stomps over to his horse (which he had wanted to call Incitatus after Caligula’s horse, even though Clarke assures him _she_ is already called Meridia). Unfortunately, the weather does nothing for his mood, and by the time the party has everything in order to set out, he’s grumbling about the long wait and the chill and the likelihood of rain.

It doesn’t endear him to his traveling partners, but at least it’s a more honest reflection of his inner turmoil.

Everyone gives up on trying to converse with him, simply falling into their own conversations on either side of him as he rides silently along. By mid-afternoon, the sky starts rumbling ominously above them, and Clarke calls for the retinue to stop and make camp as quickly as possible. They’re ahead of schedule, poised to arrive tomorrow even with the delay, so there’s no harm in stopping to shelter from the inevitable rain.

Bellamy hops off his horse wordlessly, leading Meridia towards the stream they’d been traveling parallel to for several hours. 

He hears the crunching of leaves behind him, and before he can even turn around Clarke is stalking past him, lips pursed and eyes forward.

Not sure what to do with this sudden display, he meekly follows in her trail. It would be weird to turn around now.

When he gets to the bank of the stream, he moves to stand alongside her. She never takes her eyes off the river.

“What’s your problem?” She asks with a cool detachment.

“Saddle sores,” he snaps.

“Oh really? You’re going with saddle sores?”

“Yeah. Not quite so many four day journeys on horseback on the Ark.”

“You didn’t have to come with us if you were going to act like a child. Someone else could’ve stepped in to represent Skaikru. Like Octavia, maybe.” He grimaces at the idea of putting Octavia in the spotlight while surrounded by potential threats. “Or Raven.”

The name comes out snarkily, but he can’t even begin to imagine why. Octavia and Raven would both be fine stand-ins if necessary, but they’re really no better than Miller or Monty or (not that he’ll admit it) Kane when it comes to speaking on behalf of Skaikru. He’d trust one of them to do it, of course, but he doesn’t see why Clarke singled either of them out.

“Well, I’m already here, doing my _duty.”_ He can’t help but snarl a bit at the word. Duty will be the death of him. He’d like to have five minutes to be bitter and angry about that. “That’s what we do, isn’t it?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the hardened, unaffected look drop off her face. Underneath, there’s something considerably softer — sad and vulnerable.

“Yeah,” she says quietly. “That’s what we do.”

Instead of calming him, her words make him want to explode with rage. He’s been hiding this anger and fear for so long — long before the Hanahaki, even, when he was just scared of the million other uncertainties that swirl around him constantly.

This isn’t what he wants to do. He doesn’t _want_ to give up like this — give up his life and his hope and the joys he could have found on the ground just because he accidentally assumed the mantle of leader — but he doesn’t know what other choice there is. 

Clarke is getting married. The arrangement suits every side involved, Clarke included. Just because she might not love Lexa yet doesn’t mean she couldn’t one day. And she’s been so consistently happy about the news of the match, talking about the myriad benefits it will bring.

She rarely talks about the life she imagines leading as co-leader of the coalition and ruler of Polis, but he assumes it’s because she keeps those thoughts to herself. Though he has grown to love Xandri and the weird, wonderful quirks about the town and its inhabitants, he knows that it’s nothing compared to the capital. Finally, Clarke’s astute political mind will be put to the greatest possible use.

“You’ll be happy, I suppose,” he bites out. “Your duty is really more of a reward.”

She laughs sarcastically. “Is that what this is about?” A raindrop hits his nose, and his eyes flick briefly to the sky before landing on her again. She’s finally turned to face him, a fire behind her eyes. “You’re what? Jealous that I’m going to Polis? Mad that I can’t be at your every beck and call even though Anya has strict orders to work with you in my absence? Even though this alliance fucking _benefits_ you?”

He clenches his jaw but says nothing. More raindrops fall, first in ones and twos and then suddenly quicker, a light drizzle picking up.

“What is it, Bellamy? What petty little inconvenience has you so pissed off that you refuse to speak to anyone for the whole day?”

The rain continues, and he can feel his hair sticking to his forehead, the drops rolling down his cheeks like the tears that he doesn’t have the capacity to cry.

“You don’t know anything,” he mutters, a boiling anger sitting just beneath the statement.

As if anything in his life could be described as a _petty little inconvenience._ What a fucking joke.

“Oh, don’t I? You think any of this was easy? You think negotiating to protect your people in the most ironclad and irrevocable way possible was just a fun little jaunt on the way to the aisle? But I forgot — this is all my reward, isn’t it?”

“Don’t act like you’re not happy about all of this.”

“What’s _that_ got to do with anything? You’d rather I be miserable in Polis while I offer myself up for your people?”

“No!” He shouts, because that’s not the truth at all.

He’s not even angry at her; he’s just angry. Angry at the universe and the ground and soulmates and clans and Lexa kom Trikru.

He’s not even sure why they’re fighting really, but it’s the first thing that’s pulled him out of his fog all day. A flower petal sits poised at the back of his throat, but he forces it down. Now he just wants to rage — to have a single moment to be visibly upset.

“Then what do you _want?_ Because I’m trying, Bellamy! I’m trying to do what’s right for everyone and I’m trying to be as happy as possible and I just don’t know why that’s suddenly not enough for you!”

Her hair, free-flowing around her shoulders, now sits heavy and waterlogged. The gold has darkened, and it sticks to her face as she argues.

Part of him wants to reach out and brush it back, letting his fingers tangle at the nape of her neck to pull her in for a kiss.

The other part of him is sane, if only barely.

“I don’t know what I want!” It’s all he can think to say. The reality is, he does know what he wants — Clarke and a place in the coalition. The trouble is he can only have one or the other. And anyway, it’s not like Clarke is suddenly looking to make a match with Skaikru. She’s already sorted her future.

She just doesn’t know that it won’t include him.

“None of us know what you want! Last month you wanted safety, and now you just want to act like a baby for no good reason! You haven’t given a single good explanation for what’s wrong, and I’m just supposed to put up with your moping for the rest of the journey!”

“I just want this to be _over!”_

Her face drops. She takes a shallow breath, like the words physically hurt her.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he says quickly.

“Oh, didn’t you? After getting everything you wanted out of this deal, you don’t just want me to fuck off to Polis now and leave you alone?” Her hand, clenched previously at her side in a little ball, comes up to poke him angrily in the chest.

He stares down at her as she moves in close. It’s the first time he’s really taken notice of how small she is. She always seems so much _bigger_ — queen of her people and a force of nature. But her finger is tiny and fragile as it jabs itself into his skin. 

If he pulled it away, he could enfold her hand entirely in his until it disappears.

She twists her finger slightly, digging the nail in. “I thought we were friends, Bellamy.”

“We are!” He says emphatically. How could she even call that into question?

“But you just want this all to be over,” she says, the words acrid on her tongue. “I didn’t realize being around me was such a terrible burden.”

A crack of thunder hits in the distance, and he aches to reach out and hold her. This would all be so much easier if he could just explain, but without context his anger doesn’t make sense.

“You’re not a burden.”

“No, it’s fine.” The words come out sharply, in a way that feels frighteningly final. “Lexa will take the burden off your hands, and then you and Octavia and Raven and the others can go back to _my_ home without me.” She pauses, taking a moment to think. “I guess my duty will end up being a reward to both of us.”

“Clarke—” he starts, reaching out to her through what is now a downpour, but she takes a step back. “Clarke, I’m not— I don’t—”

“Save it, Bellamy. It’s fine.”

“I’m not even sure why we’re fighting,” he says despondently. “And I’m sure whatever conclusion you’ve reached in your head about me isn’t the truth.”

“Sure it isn’t.”

“It isn’t.”

“Whatever. Like I said, it’s fine. We’ll get to Polis tomorrow, and then there will only be one day before the wedding. We’ve done what we set out to do together, and so we can be done now.”

“Clarke, I don’t want that.”

She sighs. He hadn’t noticed before, but she looks so tired today. He can’t help but wonder if it’s from the long hours of travel or the weight of responsibility. He doesn’t want to be adding to her stress — not right now.

“It’s like you said, Bellamy. You don’t know what you want.”

She walks away, leaving him and his damn horse alone at the stream, clothes sticking uncomfortably to his skin.

“I know exactly what I want,” he whispers, speaking only to himself and the forest.

You, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, _you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, YOU, YOU, YOU, YOU, YOU._

He barfs up another whole flower like it’s nothing, a little _fuck you_ from the universe.

He throws it into the stream, and it disappears with the current.

***

He eats the _wanlibluma_ that night with little hope, sleeping fitfully again as the storm continues. He doesn’t speak to Clarke at all that evening or the next morning.

They arrive in Polis to a hearty welcome from the people. Before he can meet the illustrious Commander who is unknowingly ruining his life, he is swept away to the room they’ve set aside for the representative from Skaikru.

He immediately decorates it with as many forget-me-nots as his body can force up. His hands shake the whole time.

***

He wakes up on their first full day in Polis — the day before the wedding — with little to do for once. He thought they might’ve had him in diplomatic meetings with the other clans or prostrating himself before the Commander for all to see, but apparently everyone is simply too tied up with wedding plans to bother.

He wants to be a little affronted at this clear dismissal — after all, even if Clarke’s nuptials are meant to help Skaikru, they still need to be able to stand on their own, and that starts with a seat at the table. 

The truth is that he can hardly bring himself to care, lungs burning every time he tries to breathe in too deeply. He wants to do all he can to provide for his people before he’s gone, but he isn’t sure how much more of this he can endure. His body is so tired, the trip and the poisons and the _fucking flower coiling around his insides_ doing nothing to endear him to his hosts.

A messenger comes to his room in the early afternoon to tell him that Lexa would like to speak with him, at least briefly, at dinner, mostly to make sure that the basics of their deal are still amenable to him prior to the ceremony tomorrow.

He assumes she wants to keep it short in the hopes that that means he won’t spend all night arguing over the finer points.

If this meeting had taken place a month ago, he would’ve argued every last word, making sure each t was crossed and every i dotted — no question. Would’ve kept her awake all night with a million and one questions picking the alliance apart piece by piece to make sure it was fair. That is, after all, exactly how he’d accidentally fallen in love with Clarke. Being a political nuisance is sort of his staple.

Now he can’t imagine spending that much time on it, and he’s secretly grateful that it’s something he can discuss over a dinner. Clarke wouldn’t have stiffed the Arkers, and he knows she spent a considerable amount of time going over the fine print before they’d ever left Xandri.

He nods to the messenger, letting him get back to his duties.

Dinner is still hours away, and his chest is starting to feel like it’s collapsing in on itself — a star imploding until it’s cold and dark.

He lays back down, but not before taking another dose of the _wanlibluma._ This time, he doesn’t even kid himself that it’s still in the hopes of killing the plant. He just wants to feel a different pain for a little while.

If he’s lucky, it’ll knock him out for some time, too. At this point, that would feel like a gift.

***

Octavia barges in a few hours later, not bothering to knock.

He squints an eye open at her, annoyed by the light still streaming into the room.

“Fuck,” he says. “What time is it?”

“An hour til dinner, so I figured I should come help you get ready.”

“Get ready?” He looks down at his body, still laying like a ragdoll on the bed, dressed in one of the few outfits he owns.

He’s not really sure what she’s getting at, considering his other outfits are just variants of what he’s already wearing, but she gestures to a closet that he hasn’t bothered looking in.

“They’ve lent you some ceremonial stuff to look through. Technically you don’t have to wear any of it, but it might be a nice gesture to have something on from their stuff. We’ll have to see if anything fits.”

She looks him over as he sits up, wincing at the twinge of pain the motion brings to him.

“I’m sure you won’t have trouble fitting though,” she says sadly. “You’re looking thinner than before.”

“Not all that hungry these days.”

“It’s gotten worse?” She knows the answer, of course — knows that he isn’t likely to ever make it out of Polis again. But still, some part of her had clearly been hoping that one way or another he would’ve solved this by now.

He doesn’t have a better answer for her.

“Yeah.”

“And you think it’ll be… soon?”

He nods, not wanting to speak. These days, if he’s not worried about the threat of puking up flowers, he’s worried about the threat of tears. There’s no time to break down before what’s likely to be his last really important negotiation, even if his part basically boils down to signing on the dotted line.

“And you’re still sure that this is what you want?”

“I’m sure it’s still the best of a lot of bad options, yes.”

She smiles sadly, jerking her head up and down in a nod in order to hide the emotion on her face.

“Okay, then let’s find something to wear.”

They work their way through the closet, discarding all the articles of clothing that look too small, too big, or too confusing to put on. Some are rustic — pelts and furs that have clearly been sewn together with loving attention. Others look more like his own clothes, just worn down and modified into something more like armor than an outfit.

They settle on something simple: a jacket to go over top of his own outfit. It has more zippers and buckles than his normal jacket does, and he assumes it’s something that survived in a bunker somewhere before being found by the grounders. They’ve added a pauldron to one shoulder, though it seems to be more for show than actual protection.

Still, it’s nice looking and will hopefully please the grounders without having to change his outfit entirely. The bonus is that the jacket, despite its various embellishments, isn’t too heavy. He’s never given much thought to the weight of his clothing, but now that his whole torso feels like it might cave in at any moment, he’s glad not to be wearing something ridiculously decked out.

“Did you hear about Clarke?” Octavia asks idly as she adjusts his clothing slightly. He doesn’t move, but his eyes do immediately flick to her face at the question.

“What about Clarke?”

“Oh, she was doing all sorts of preparation today — being pampered and trying on nice clothes, I’d imagine. Apparently at one point she got a bit lightheaded, though. Caused a commotion, but I guess it was just a combination of being tired from the trip and being a bit nervous.”

“She said that herself?” He asks, wanting to make sure that it wasn’t actually something else. The last thing anyone needed right now was for Clarke to be sick. Everything hinges on this wedding.

“Yeah, from what I understand. I wasn’t there or anything, but all the gossip is identical, so I’m assuming that means there’s some truth to it.”

He bobs his head, allowing her to keep fidgeting with the last of the unnecessary buckles.

“I hope she feels better. Tomorrow is going to be…” his voice breaks, becoming gruffer than he means it to. “It’s gonna be a long day.”

“Yeah,” she says sadly, giving him a pat on the cheek now that she’s finished with the jacket. “Let’s just get you through tonight.”

***

The most infuriating thing about this whole mess is that, in the end, he can’t even hate Lexa.

It’s unfair, really. He thinks he deserves to hate her, at least a little bit. It doesn’t even have to be because of her or her actions. He just needs the space to irrationally wish she had never been born because, whether she knows it or not, her presence is the icing on the cake that is going to kill him.

Which is why it sucks so bad that she’s actually pretty cool, all things considered.

She waltzes in after everyone else in the dinning room has already been sat, long tables spanning the room so that all the kings, queens, diplomats, and their guests can have the meal together.

Bellamy had been speaking to Coran, the leader from Louwoda Kliron who they’d been trying to impress all those weeks ago. He’s quite amiable, just as Clarke had said. And just like she’d said, his second, a small man called Klins, is the complete opposite, seemingly annoyed by Bellamy’s presence.

(It’s not really a surprise that Clarke was right all along about waiting for Coran’s health to improve. Still, he’s always impressed by how thoroughly she knows the other leaders, both friends and foes.)

Lexa’s entrance cuts their conversation short, but it’s all for the better as she joins him and Clarke at their table. Clarke’s status as the guest of honor granted him status at the most important table alongside her, and though he’s not exactly thrilled to be in the spotlight this evening, he knows it’s a mark of respect to both him and the Arkers.

“Belomi kom Skaikru,” she says as she reaches the table. Her eyes pass over him once, and he’s certain she isn’t impressed by what she sees.

But as the dinner goes on, and as they talk about their welcome into the coalition, she seems pleased with his knowledge. He’s learned about Trikru’s culture and style of living in order to adapt, but he’s also studied the other clans and the nature of the coalition with Clarke’s help. Lexa seems impressed that he hasn’t come stomping into her city demanding promises that the Commander could never make.

And that had been what he’d wanted to do all those months ago, long before he and Clarke became friends and the Ark fell out of the sky. He’d thought determination and a death wish would be enough to solve his problems, but that never would’ve worked.

Clarke had provided the order needed to control his chaotic passion.

Bellamy makes a joke about — of all things — grain stores, and Lexa actually snorts, which definitely doesn’t make him feel at all proud.

The stoic Commander, laughing at Bellamy’s idiotic remarks. It isn’t what he’d expected.

With Clarke’s input, they manage to resolve the final questions about their peace, creating something that works for all parties involved.

Tomorrow will be the wedding, and the day after, the leader of Skaikru will swear their people to the coalition.

Bellamy was careful to word it as such. He’s not sure he’ll survive until the day after the wedding, and he wants Miller or Kane or even _Octavia_ to be able to finish what he’s started.

(Although, for the record, it better not be Octavia. She’s always far too excited to put herself in potentially dangerous situations, and he’d prefer she just get to be seventeen for a while longer.)

Lexa places her hand on Clarke’s on the table as they discuss the wedding the following day, and he can see that the Commander is truly happy at her good fortune. She’s been interested in Clarke from a distance for so long, and now they will pledge themselves to each other.

Clarke smiles back at her fiance, but Bellamy can’t help but notice that her eyes seem dull. Maybe she really is tired, but he can’t help but wonder…

He can’t help but wonder — really, for the first time — if he’s doing her a disservice by not being honest with his feelings. If maybe she would be _happier—_

No. It would be stupid to think like that — stupid to let himself hope. Whether or not Clarke is in love with Lexa doesn’t change anything. Lincoln said Hanahaki was caused by an imbalanced soulbond, which means she doesn’t love him, either. Telling her would only muddle things up, making it harder for her to do the one thing she must: create an alliance through marriage that will serve all their needs. She’s the queen, and her focus has always been on the political over the personal.

But it’s easy to wish, just for one heartbreaking moment, that she could have found something more with him. That they could’ve been whatever the universe marked them out to be.

***

He closes his eyes to sleep that night and wakes in a sea of flowers. 

For a second he panics, thinking that somehow each little blue flower came out of him, covering his body and all of his surroundings. He’s buried under them, as though he’s created his own funeral shroud and now it’s simply waiting for him to die in it. It takes a moment to notice that he’s not in a bed — not in Polis at all, it seems.

There’s only meadow as far as his eyes can see, a ring of tall trees surrounding the space. They keep the meadow insulated from the horrors of the world that he spends so much of his time either trying to fight or trying to forget.

He sits up, brushing away the forget-me-nots covering his torso. The ones around him grow straight from the ground, but those on his chest are just the flower heads, and he isn’t sure if that means he spit them up after all.

Around him, there is an array of flowers. The blue of the forget-me-nots are perhaps the most prevalent, but there are white flowers growing as well, along with pretty pinkish-purple ones.

His eyes rove over the space, confused as to why he’s here. It’s hard to remember exactly what he’d been doing before he’d woken up in the meadow — something in Polis, certainly, but he can’t recall exactly why he’d been there.

His breathing is deep and easy, though, and he’s certain that means something important. He revels in it for a few moments, each inhale full and even without a single rattle or shock of pain.

He can’t help but smile as the sun shines upon him.

There’s a rustling just beside him, and he looks down quickly. From under a heap of flowers, he can just make out a flash of gold, warm and honeyed in the light.

“Clarke?” He brushes away the flowers as gently as he can until he sees her face, relaxed in sleep. “Clarke?” 

Her nose scrunches up adorably, and he feels his heart thump in his chest at the sight.

“Bell?” She asks sleepily, eyes only barely opening up to see him before closing again.

Only one person in his life has ever been close enough to him to call him _Bell,_ but he knows instantly that he wants to hear the name on Clarke’s lips again.

His hand moves to her cheek, fingers skimming across the smooth skin there. He’s so afraid that one wrong move will somehow break the spell of the moment.

Her hair is surrounded by the flowers — blues and purples and white all coming together to make a crown around her. It’s the first time she’s ever looked truly like a queen to him. Royal and powerful, soft and sleepy.

“What are you doing here, Clarke?”

She blinks up at him again, a small smile on her face. He can’t help but drag his thumb towards the corner of her lips, wanting to brush against that little piece of happiness. She’s always so serious.

“Resting,” is her only response, but her eyes stay open this time as she looks up at him above her.

“Don’t you—” he swallows, a lump suddenly forming in his throat as a memory comes back to him. “Don’t you have a wedding to get ready for?”

She puts her hand over his on her cheek, pressing it more firmly to her skin.

Instead of responding to his question, she asks one of her own.

“Will you miss me?”

He feels that burning sensation behind his eyes, and he worries he’s going to cry right here in their little paradise. He turns towards her more fully, placing his other hand on her opposite cheek, bending down to rest his forehead on hers. The smell of the flowers is overpowering, but her breath inches away from his lips keeps him grounded.

“Yes,” he says simply, trying to hold himself together. “So much. Please, I don’t—”

But he stops, not sure what to say even now. He’s played his cards so close to his chest that he isn’t sure what’s left to beg for.

Their eyes are closed, but he can feel the way her cheeks move to accommodate her sad smile.

“I’ll miss you, too. I don’t want to be apart.”

He wishes it was as simple as being a few weeks of separation, one in Polis and one in Xandri. That is something they might’ve been able to overcome.

“You’ll barely have time to miss me.”

Her eyelashes flutter open to look at him, gaze heavy and broken. The look is so forlorn that for a moment he considers that maybe she _knows._ That she’s afraid to say goodbye because she knows how final it will be. Knows that this is their ending. Knows that he’s a dead man walking.

Instead, she does the one thing he never expected.

She stretches her neck up to kiss him — plush and brief and everything he’s ever imagined. He wants more, more, _more._

Then she pulls back, staring him down as she says, “You’re right. I won’t have time to miss you at all.”

A chill passes through him, his fingers going numb on her cheeks. He can’t pull them away, suddenly having no control over his body as he stares down at her.

All at once, he feels the absent flower in his chest grow and sprout. What had taken more than two weeks in his body happens over the course of ten seconds, and the sudden shift inside threatens to tear him apart.

“Clarke—” he chokes out, the plant climbing higher and higher.

Her hand wraps around his wrist, holding it against her cheek even as his breathing becomes more panicked and shallow. There’s no malice in her eyes though — only a familiar, sad exhaustion.

“What do you want, Bellamy?”

He wakes up with a gasp, sitting bolt upright in his bed as he forces small puffs of air into his lungs. 

It’s still mostly dark in his room, the sun not having fully risen yet over Polis, but he’s suddenly too keyed up to sleep. He can’t help but see her whenever he closes his eyes — the way she’d yelled at him in the rain; the way she’d told him how quickly she would forget him in his dream.

He shouldn’t be upset about it. It’s his own subconscious yelling these thoughts back at him through Clarke’s lips, and that doesn’t make any of it her fault.

But he’s going to die, and she’s going to forget him.

Maybe not immediately. Maybe not even for a while if he’s lucky. There will be a wedding to celebrate and a friend’s death to mourn, and it’ll be a lot to deal with at once. She’ll be busy, pulled a million different directions. But she won’t _forget._

At least not for a while.

It’s the best he can hope for. 

But it’s not a lot to hope for, either, and he can’t fall back to sleep with these thoughts in his head.

***

He pushes open the door to a training room. It’s a big open space in a lower section of the tower. Supposedly Lexa will fight here on occasion, keeping her skills in top shape. It had been shown to him only briefly on a tour of the tower at the beginning of their stay, and he’s fairly certain that at no point was he invited to use the space.

But he’s tired and angry and sad, and he doubts Lexa will end their peace treaty just because he broke into her training room before the rest of Polis was even awake.

His head is down as he enters the room, still lost in his thoughts. At the sound of a sword slicing cleanly through open air, he looks up, startled to not be alone at this hour.

“Bellamy?” She asks, confused as she turns to see him in the entryway.

“Of course it’s you,” he mutters under his breath, too quietly for her to hear. 

“What are you doing here?”

“Woke up early. Thought I’d try to work off some energy. What about you? Shouldn’t you be sleeping in late on your wedding day?”

The words are acid on his tongue, but he’s almost used to that familiar pain by now.

There’s a sheen of sweat on her forehead, and her arm comes up to try to wipe some of it away.

“Just couldn’t sleep, I guess. Too much going on around me to be at peace.”

He nods, taking her in more closely. Her sword is in her hand, tip resting on the ground now that she’s stopped her exercises. It looks like she hardly slept at all the night before — there are bags under her eyes and her skin doesn’t glow the way it normally does.

“I’m sorry,” he says, the words practically bursting out of him. He didn’t even know he’d wanted to apologize until it was already sitting between them.

“That I couldn’t sleep?” She eyes him warily.

“No, just— for everything. I’m sorry that we fought on the way here. I’m sorry if I’m making things more difficult for you than they need to be. I know you’ve got a lot of reasons already to be stressed, and I shouldn’t have been adding to that.”

“Okay,” she says, still looking at him with slight confusion. Maybe it’s too early in the day for absolution. “It’s okay, Bellamy. I didn’t mean to snap at you anyway. I was just tense. You’re right — I didn’t even know why we were fighting.”

“You were right, too,” he says quickly. “About me not knowing what I wanted. But I know now.” His breathing is painful, an awkward burning in his chest, but he forces the words out anyways because she’s looking up at him with such rapt attention. “I want you to have an amazing wedding, and I want you to be happy. You deserve that.”

“Yeah?” She asks, looking like he might try to steal the words back.

“Yeah. You’re an amazing queen, Clarke. We wouldn’t be alive today without you. I wouldn’t—”

He pauses, taking a breath.

“I don’t know what my life would be like if I hadn’t met you.” The sarcastic part of his brain fires back that his life might’ve been _longer_ without her, considering the Hanahaki that’s sapping the energy from him. But the bigger part of him knows that that’s too simple an answer. He wouldn’t be half the person he is now if he’d never met her. “And I’m really glad that our ship landed in your territory so I don’t have to wonder what never meeting you would’ve been like.”

“Bell, I—” She drops her sword, letting it _thunk_ onto the ground. “I don’t know what to say. I’m glad I met you, too.”

He laughs. “Glad you didn’t get so irritated with me that you decided to just behead me to end your suffering?”

“Yeah,” she smiles. “Definitely glad I didn’t do that. I might’ve never learned that you’re actually a really great person under the whole fire and brimstone act.”

“Don’t make me blush,” he teases, and her smile widens at the words. “I hope you know how much I’ll miss you. And how much I appreciate that you’re doing this for us.”

She nods slowly, the atmosphere suddenly heavier. “I do. I know.”

He smiles again, tighter this time. “And I hope she makes you happy. I want to imagine you living the best life here — happy and loved and kicking everyone’s asses when they step out of line.”

She steps towards him quickly, not pausing for even a moment before she throws her arms around him. Her face buries itself in his shoulder, and after a split-second of confusion, his arms move to encircle her.

His eyes fill up with tears, but he tries desperately not to let them spill over as he holds her to him. 

“I want to imagine you in Xandri,” she says, her voice hoarse. Perhaps she’s holding in tears as well. “With all our friends from both camps, looking out over the best sunsets in all the lands of the twelve clans.”

He moves his hand to her hair, running his fingers through it gently. “You don’t have to imagine it. You’ll see it for yourself in a few months when you come home.”

It’s a lie, but she doesn’t need to know that. Not today.

“I know,” she says easily. “But I still want to imagine it.”

He keeps petting her hair, not wanting to let go.

“Yeah. Me too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooooof.
> 
> I loved writing that dream scene, and I think it's my favorite part of this chapter. Also, who doesn't love a good rain fight? (I mean, a rain kiss probably would've been better, but these characters are both very dumb, so that wasn't in the cards for them).
> 
> I'm really looking forward to wrapping this story up and showing you all how it ends. See you after the holidays for the final installment!
> 
> If you want to give me a Christmas gift, I'd hugely appreciate your thoughts on this chapter :)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've reached the end! This is the last chapter, as well as my last update of 2020! What a wild six months it's been since I first started writing — thank you all for joining me on the ride! Can't wait to keep going in 2021 :)
> 
> PLEASE NOTE: This chapter upped the rating from M to E. There is a short but still explicit sex scene, and if that's something you aren't comfortable with, please feel free to scroll past it to the next set of asterisk. You won't be missing anything in terms of plot.
> 
> I hope you enjoy! Happy New Year!

Bellamy leaves Clarke in the sparring room in time to dress, but before he can make his way to the ceremony, he feels his chest tightening in a way that it’s never done before.

For a moment, the feeling inside him is so intense that he thinks _this is it._ He won’t have to worry about watching Clarke get married because he’ll already be dead.

The stem squeezes tight, crushing him from the inside out. His vision blurs, dotting itself with little black specks floating through the room.

When he was a child, he’d told his mother that he wanted to give her a great big hug like a koala. He’d read about them from an Ark-approved ebook in school, and they had charmed him. He’d only been maybe eight at the time, Octavia no older than an infant.

He’d started spitting off facts about koalas — like that they’re actually _marsupials_ instead of bears, or that they could eat up to a kilogram of eucalyptus each day. Of course, he didn’t know what eucalyptus was or why that was so special, but the book said it was an interesting fact, so he dutifully memorized it.

But his mother was drunk, and tired, and afraid. Her baby cried in the quiet of the night sometimes, even though nobody in their compartment was meant to have an infant.

So, through slightly slurred words, she countered with her own facts.

Better to have a hug from a python, she’d said, instead of a koala. 

People used to think that pythons wrapped themselves so tightly around their prey that they simply stopped breathing, asphyxiating quickly enough that the snake could then consume them whole. Pigs, monkeys, dogs, _people._ A reticulated python would kill them all. Prey was prey, after all.

But then scientists realized that the constriction of the lungs was only part of the problem. The real issue was that a python’s hug was so strong that it cut off the blood flow in the body. Not enough blood to the brain and a person would go unconscious in seconds, leading to cardiac arrest.

Bellamy, who had been so joyously listing off his animal facts in an attempt to impress his mother, stared at her in horror. For all that every person on the Ark longed for the ground, he couldn’t help but imagine being squeezed so tightly, fighting uselessly against a strength far beyond his own until his body simply could no longer function.

He doesn’t need to imagine it now.

There’s nothing on the outside; no snake surrounding him that he could try to fight off. There is only the horrible, claustrophobic feeling in his chest; his shallow breaths and his escalating heartbeat. He can hear the blood rushing in his ears, trying to compensate for the way his heart is being slowly crushed.

His fingers go numb, and he stumbles back to his bed to sit down before he falls. The only sound in the room is his heavy panting, trying desperately to keep breathing long enough for the plant to loosen it’s hold. 

Idly, unable to fully process what’s going on around him, he notices that his fingertips have turned a frightening shade of white, the blood no longer reaching them. Clumsily, he grasps at the fabric of the grounder shirt over his heart like he can somehow uncoil the vines if he only tries hard enough.

He’s a guest in his body now. The flower, like the python, has all the control, winding tighter and tighter until there’s nothing left of him to save. He is the prey.

He closes his eyes, trying to breathe through it. He’s still conscious, so his circulation can’t be critical at the moment. If he just waits, just keeps as calm as possible—

It probably only takes a few minutes before the feeling dissipates, the grip on his organs loosening enough that he can let out a relieved sigh. Still, it felt like hours. Too panicked to yell for help, doomed to die alone and afraid.

When he’s had a moment to shake away the tension in his body, he shoves his finger down his throat until a slew of petals are forced up. He crumples them in his fist, feeling for the first time in a while like he can properly inhale.

Standing up again shakily, he discards the flowers and brushes himself off. In the mirror, he can see his own cursed countenance staring back at him — can see the way his face looks gaunt, bruises under his eyes. He rubs a hand over his face tiredly, trying to wipe away the effects of death.

A knock sounds at the door.

“It’s time,” Octavia says, pushing her head through the slight opening she’s made. The words are innocent, yet they hang over him like a peal of bells ringing out for a funeral. He wonders if — far off in the vacuum of space, a million miles from pythons and church bells — this is how his mother felt as she walked to the airlock. “Are you ready?”

He takes a moment, looking at himself in the reflection. He tries to remember what he was before; tries to remember that this is all worth it in the scheme of things.

It’s hard to imagine that he’ll make it through the night — not after that last attack. This must be the last gasp before the end. He may not even make it through the whole wedding at the rate things are moving.

“No,” he replies finally, voice broken. “Let’s get this over with.”

She walks over to his side, taking his hand in hers.

“Are you going to be okay?” She asks softly.

He doesn’t know if she means emotionally or physically, but the answer is the same either way. Still, he doesn’t want to scare her. If he dies in front of everyone, she’ll be traumatized enough having to watch. If it’s anything like the attack he’d just had, it’ll be an ugly and frightening thing to witness.

So he lies.

“Of course I’ll be okay.” And then he tacks on the truth, for good measure. “I chose this.”

“I know,” she sighs. She looks up at their faces in the mirror. She’s a head shorter than him and far paler, but there’s something in their features that inextricably links them. The stubborn set to both of their jaws, maybe.

Her expression is sad, and he knows she’s thinking that this may well be the last time she ever sees them like this — alive and together.

He squeezes her hand gently. For the moment, he’s still here. That’s as much as he can promise her anymore.

“Come on,” she says finally. “They want you up at the front of the Skaikru delegation.”

He just nods tiredly. _Always on show._

***

Bellamy had never attended a wedding on the Ark, but only because weddings on the Ark were hardly an event worth attending.

A couple would submit paperwork to the council with their intention to wed. Then, at an approved date and time, they would make their way to Go-Sci to sign a certificate acknowledging their marriage.

And that was it.

Some people, he knew, tried to throw little parties in their compartments after the signing, but hardly anyone from factory station bothered. It took up too much time to plan and too many ration points to execute.

Grounder weddings are nothing like that, especially when the brides are a Queen and a Commander.

The room itself is decked out in the finest fabrics draped over parts of the walls. Wall sconces, which he hopes are a suitable distance from the drapery, help to light the room, the glow from the candles soft and warm. Somehow, even in a room with a hundred witnesses, the space itself feels intimate.

A woman sings, her voice ringing out around the room as Clarke and Lexa enter from separate doors, walking towards the central dais before which the _flaimkepa_ stands.

He’s no good at trigedasleng. Clarke had spent several weeks trying to teach him the basics, but eventually they’d stopped seeing each other as often and the lessons ceased. Luckily, Lincoln gently whispers a translation of the lyrics into Octavia’s ear, and it’s just barely loud enough for him to hear.

_And will you take_

_A life with me?_

_This world will burn_

_Save what you need_

_I am fearless_

_I aim to fight_

_I aim to die_

_You're in my sight_

_And will you take_

_A life with me?_

_Blood must have blood_

_My body bleeds_

It doesn’t strike Bellamy as being a particularly _romantic_ song, certainly not something he’d expect from a wedding, but he supposes that maybe it’s just another very distinct difference in culture. 

He doesn’t think of murder as a fun dating opportunity, but he’s still new to the ground. Maybe, if he’d been given enough time here, he would’ve discovered the profound allure to _blood must have blood._

Then again, based on the face Octavia’s making at the translated lyrics, maybe not. She’s adapted to the grounder way of life better than just about anyone, but even she seems to find this whole thing bizarre.

When the song ends, Titus begins to speak. Lincoln doesn’t bother to translate the exact words, only explaining briefly that he’s greeting the assembled guests and speaking about the unity brought about by the Commander’s decision to marry.

Even at her own wedding, Lexa looks intense. The black around her eyes remains, along with the little gear between them that he doesn’t quite understand. Her hair is in braids and she wears a heavy cape. The only concession she’s made to the day itself is a red and black dress. He’s sure that she has a few weapons tucked away even still.

Clarke, on the other hand, wears no capes or heavy fabrics. Her dress is more of a long, black slip, with only thin straps to hold it up and a slit up the leg. The bottom is artfully distressed, though he thinks it’s simply to do with the fact that a silk dress like that must be quite old. Unlike Lexa, she is fresh-faced, only a bit of red added to her cheeks to take away from her pale complexion. She wears no shoes.

He wonders, just for a moment, if she’s cold.

The two women look at each other as Titus continues on, his voice becoming more of a drone in the room. Through Lexa’s nearly blank stare, he can see the cracks of love. She doesn’t want to appear too besotted at her own wedding, but it’s obvious to Bellamy that underneath the trappings of leadership she is excited.

Clarke’s expression is impossible to read. Her face is soft but her eyes look hazy, as though she’s seeing something beyond the room in front of her. Titus says something, and she seems to snap back to the present.

“Vows,” Lincoln whispers to Octavia. She just hums, bringing her hand up to Bellamy’s arm to give it a little squeeze.

His body is so _tired_ after all this time, completely wrung out but still unwilling to give up. He wonders how long the disease will allow him to keep fighting — to keep suffering.

A part of him is ready for the pain to finally be over. It wouldn’t be ideal in the middle of a wedding, but the idea of watching his soulmate—

No. Soulmate isn’t the right word. It implies that the universe chose Clarke for him and that he had no agency in any of it, and he knows that to be untrue.

He would choose her. In a thousand lifetimes, over and over, he would choose her. Even if it ended the same way every time, he knows that if he met her, he would fall in love with her. Would be willing to die for her. It’s just who she is — there is no version of Bellamy in the universe who wouldn’t be enthralled by her.

The corners of his lips turn up, even as he prepares to watch his love — his heart — pledge herself to someone else.

Her eyes flick over to him, and he lets the little smile sit on his face. This is how he wants to remember her: hair unbound, face unadorned, and yet somehow the scariest, strongest, loveliest person he’s ever known.

Lexa drops to her knees.

Lincoln explains that in a typical ceremony, Clarke would have to pledge herself to the _heda_ first. She, after all, is a supplicant to the Commander.

But Lexa insisted that she be allowed to make her vows first as a show of good faith to her bride, and though Titus hadn’t been pleased with the arrangement, he’d eventually accepted the change.

Lexa’s wide eyes stare up at Clarke imploringly. 

“I swear fealty to you, Clarke, _Haiplana kom Trikru._ I vow to treat your needs as my own and your people as my people. _Ai badan yu op en nou moun.”_ Lexa kisses her hand softly. Clarke looks a little choked up at the words.

 _Ai badan yu op en nou moun._ I serve you and no other. 

He only knows the phrase because Clarke had made him say it to her when they’d first started working together. He’d rolled his eyes and parroted the words as sarcastically as possible, but Clarke hadn’t seemed to mind.

In fact, that might’ve been the first time he can remember making her laugh.

A moment passes before Lexa’s eyebrows scrunch together in confusion. Titus looks to Clarke, clearly waiting for something.

Bellamy knows this part, too. Clarke has to say a phrase to formally accept Lexa’s vows before she can kneel and make her own. Her eyes flit back and forth, as though she’s forgotten what comes next. The hand not being held by Lexa balls up in a little fist at her side.

Finally Clarke opens her mouth to speak, her expression strained.

“I accept your oaths.” Lexa still looks bemused, though she doesn’t move from her place at Clarke’s feet. “My people—” 

She pauses, grasping Lexa’s hand more firmly in her own. “My people are your people.”

The crowd shifts uneasily, wondering why the Queen had hesitated.

Though he’s at the front of the Skaikru congregants, he isn’t particularly close to the dais. The circle around the brides had needed to be big enough to fit all thirteen delegations, and thus there are several meters between the guests and Clarke.

Still, he can see the way her eyes start darting around. The way her shoulders shake slightly with nerves. The way she takes a step back from Lexa, like she’s suddenly uncertain about her surroundings.

“Clarke?” Lexa asks quietly. Her grip on Clarke’s hand doesn’t loosen, but her eyes are concerned.

“I—”

Her eyes keep flitting around until they finally land on him.

He’s not sure why she spent so long looking, as though he wasn’t nearly front and center, but once she’s got him in her sight, she doesn’t look away.

“Bell?” Octavia asks, pulling on his arm.

Clarke splutters up a cough, the sound barely there.

Then, without any warning, she crumples to the ground, her head smacking harshly against the concrete floor.

His heart stops.

His throat _burns._

“Clarke?” He forces out through pain and shock. Members of the various delegations start yelling in panic. Someone thinks she’s sick, carrying an infectious disease. Another is yelling about the queen somehow being shot through the open side of the building by a sharpshooter, despite the fact that there seems to be neither arrow nor bullet lodged in her chest.

Someone to the left of the room — from Delfikru or Podakru, maybe — pulls out a sword. Others are quick to mirror the action, not wanting to be the last person armed if things get ugly.

Lexa leans over her, trying to figure out what’s wrong. She takes Clarke’s pulse — which is fast — and then checks to see if she’s breathing. The panicked look she shoots at Titus makes Bellamy think that she isn’t.

Her dress is loose and light. There are no ties or stays to wrench apart to ease breathing, but Lexa runs her hands over Clarke’s torso as though she could find something that would end her suffering.

His feet are rooted to the floor, completely frozen in his fear.

Then she coughs, and the ground is covered over in purple flowers.

“Bell,” Octavia says, still pulling at his shirtsleeve, her voice more insistent.

He can’t look away, the ache in his chest growing. He feels utterly removed from his body, like he’s watching this scene from a distance. 

“Clarke?” Lexa asks, panicked as she watches the pile of flowers grow with every exhale Clarke manages. They’re coming up a handful at a time, the flowers themselves considerably bigger than those that Bellamy has been dealing with. “Clarke?”

There are dozens of flowers on the floor before her, and the audience starts tittering again, as though the spectacle and indignity of Hanahaki at the Commander’s wedding supersedes the reality of watching someone die.

Or maybe they really just don’t care.

“Clarke?” Lexa asks again, seeming to be caught in a loop. “Who—? Who is—?”

His brain short circuits for a second, so horrified by everything that is happening. All along he’s loved Clarke, and all along she’s loved someone else? He can’t fit together the puzzle pieces in his head quickly enough. Everything is suddenly sideways, the static in his mind overpowering all else. He wants to go to her, but his limbs are useless, unable to fathom the tragedy that has struck all at once.

“Bellamy!” Octavia says finally, snapping him out of his stupor so he will look at her.

“Somebody—” Lexa yells, voice filled with the urgency that betrays her fear, “—find the Queen’s soulmate! _Now!”_

“Get up there, you idiot!” Octavia says, now using all her body weight to push him forward. “She’s dying!”

“I’m not…” he says, still in shock. “It’s not me. I’m not her soulmate.”

“How do you know?”

She keeps pushing him forward, his feet cooperating unthinkingly until he reaches Clarke’s prone body. Without thought, he drops down onto his knees beside her, his hands hovering over her body as she convulses.

“If I was, we wouldn’t have… wouldn’t be—”

He gestures helplessly to the flowers.

Octavia kneels beside him. “Worry about that later. She’s dying, and you’re the only one who can potentially stop it.”

“Clarke?” He asks, hand shaking nervously until he places it on her ribs. She’s breathing again, but the flowers keep coming. When her mouth is open, he can see the plant at the back of her throat, having climbed all the way up until it sits just behind her tongue.

“Everybody out!” Lexa yells to the room at large. He can hardly focus on what’s going on behind him.

“Bell.” It’s the first time she’s spoken since she accepted Lexa’s oath, and he can hardly believe she’s managing it at all with how badly her body is shaking. Her voice is so quiet amidst all the other sounds in the room: the fighting behind them as people make their way to the doors, the attempts to keep the peace, and even her own coughs. “Sorry, Bell. So sorry.”

Tears leak out of the corners of her eyes as she chokes.

“Clarke, please,” he says brokenly, shaking his head because he doesn’t know what to do. “Please, I—”

“My… fault,” she forces out. Another six flowers come up while she speaks. Orchids, he realizes absently. She smiles up at him through all the heaving that wracks her small frame. “Miss you.”

And that’s when it clicks.

God, he’s so stupid.

There’s no logic to it — at least no logic that he can think of in the chaos of the moment — but he really is her soulmate. She’s dying right now because she thinks he doesn’t love her.

It almost makes a laugh bubble up in his chest. As though it’s even possible that he doesn’t want her.

“Clarke, I love you,” he gasps out, the words unburdening him immediately. “Please, I love you, Clarke. You’re awake — you can hear me. It has to stop now. It’s supposed to stop.”

She stares up at him for a moment, but the flowers don’t stop. He brings his hand to her cheek in a panic as they only seem to increase in speed. She chokes around them, no longer able to breathe in the momentary pauses between coughs. 

Her eyes go wide, terrified as it continues. Each gasp is painful as she tries helplessly to let any air fill her lungs, the constriction that he knows so well cutting off all sense until all she can do is panic.

“Clarke,” he says in a rush, fingers brushing away the dozens of flowers that are still coming up. “Clarke, please. I love you. _I love you.”_

She grasps desperately at his hand with fingers that have lost all dexterity, and something about the action makes him feel sick. 

_She doesn’t want to be alone when she dies. She wants him to hold her hand._

“It’s supposed to stop,” he says, tears welling up in his eyes. “It’s supposed to stop! I love her — make it stop! Please, I’m—”

He looks around at the faces there. Lexa, Titus, Octavia, Lincoln.

Lincoln.

“You have to do something,” he begs, looking right at the man. “Please, there has to be something we can do.”

Lincoln looks at the scene before him with distress in his eyes. “There isn’t,” he says sadly. “There’s no time now even for an emergency removal of the flower.” Clarke spits up more flowers, the stem of the plant now growing up her tongue like a snake. “And even if we could, she didn’t—” he pauses. He takes a deep breath, looking down at his friend, his Queen. “She didn’t want that.”

“No!” He shouts, suddenly angry. “There has to be something. There has to be another way.” He looks down at her face, lips a frightening blue color. There’s naked fear in her eyes as she clings frantically to his hand, begging him to make it stop. “This isn’t how it ends.”

Clarke’s nails dig into the skin of his hand, her breath coming in in sharp, ragged gasps, the sounds a person makes just before the end.

“Clarke,” he says, trying to keep her eyes focused. “Hey, Clarke. I need you to keep breathing through it, okay? Okay? Just listen to my voice. It’s all going to be alright in a moment, I swear.”

She nods, though her breathing gets more and more shallow. The rest of her face starts matching the blue hue of her lips.

“Please,” he chokes out on a sob, but she can only manage another moment before her head lulls to the side, eyes fluttering closed.

“Clarke, no,” he says frantically, patting her cheeks in an effort to bring her back to him. “Don’t close your eyes. Just keep looking at me.”

The words are useless though. She’s passed out, her chest barely moving. If she doesn’t breathe now, she’ll die.

“It’s too late,” comes Lexa’s shocked voice. Staring down at the blue face of her fiance, she shudders, eyes filled with tears. “It’s too late — she’s dying.”

“No she’s _not!_ ” Distraught, he immediately moves to her chest, doing compressions without thought. “She’s not gonna die! I’m not losing her.” 

He shifts to put his mouth on hers, determined to force some air into her lungs if it’s the last thing he does. He can’t let her die. Not when he loves her. Not when she, above almost anyone he knows, deserves the chance to live.

Not when his cowardice is the thing that’s killing her.

His mouth against hers, he can’t help but think that it’s a pale imitation of a first kiss. He’ll never get a kiss — he’ll only ever have this.

In a fairytale, the press of his lips would be enough. 

But this isn’t a fairytale.

He starts the compressions again, tears rolling down his cheeks. “You can’t go, Clarke. You can’t. I don’t want to do this without you.”

Octavia puts her hand on his arm, trying to calm him as though he’s a frightened animal. “She’s gone, Bell. It’s over.”

“It’s not over!” He slams his hand against her chest in despair. “Wake up, Clarke! You’re not gonna die like this.” His hand slams down again.

He cradles her head in his hands. She looks so small, so fragile. Not at all the steady, fearsome queen. 

A sob bursts out of him at the thought, and he lets his forehead rest against hers for a second. One of his tears lands on her cheek like a drop of dew. “You’re not gonna die like this.”

“Bell—”

 _“No!”_ He screams, trying again with the compressions. “I can’t let her die. I can’t, O. _I can’t feel it anymore.”_

She looks alarmed, though he doesn’t notice it, his eyes hyper-focused on only one thing. 

“Can’t feel what?”

He keeps up his compressions, unwilling to imagine anything else. It’s going to work. It has to work.

He lets out another sob, the sound anguished.

“My flower. I can’t— I can’t feel the flower anymore. It’s _gone,_ Octavia, don’t you see?”

There’s an ache in his chest, so heavy it’s almost debilitating. But it isn’t the Hanahaki — of that he’s certain. Quietly, while the love of his life dies on the floor, his own flower had curled in on itself until it was too tiny to notice.

“Bellamy, that’s a good thing. If it’s gone, the bond must be complete.”

“It’s not,” he cries, hands still pushing against her chest uselessly until he again presses his lips to hers for the space of three breaths. “It’s not.”

“I don’t understand.”

“She’s… She’s…”

The words get caught in his throat, unable to admit the truth.

_She’s dying._

No, not really.

_She’s dead._

He’s not sure any amount of CPR will save her now, but his hands keep going. It’s the only thing he has left — the only hope.

“My flower is gone. I can’t— I don’t want to do this without her. She’s going to die here because of me and I can’t even curl up on the ground next to her and wait for the end. It’s _gone.”_

He lets out a wet laugh at the horrible irony of having the cure to his own affliction only because of her death. He doesn’t want to stay here if she’s gone — for the first time, the gaping emptiness in his chest is a curse, not a blessing. He would give anything to feel that constriction growing tighter and tighter as Clarke’s face turns a deeper shade of blue.

Anywhere she is, he wants to follow. In Xandri, in Polis, even in death.

He pushes back a strand of her hair, his fingers uncontrollably shaking against the softness of her skin.

“Please, Clarke. Not without me.”

Then he moves again to open her mouth, trying to force another few breaths into her tired lungs.

Lincoln watches as her chest rises quietly, her body a ragdoll in Bellamy’s hands.

“Your _blumachok_ is gone? Completely?”

He glares at Lincoln, having no time for inane questions when Clarke is _dying._ Nobody is doing anything of use, and every moment just brings them closer to an inevitability that he refuses to think about.

She can’t leave him here. He won’t allow it.

“Yes. Gone completely now that it would have finally been useful.”

“Interesting,” is all he says, taking a moment to stare at them both. “She’ll live, I think.”

Octavia’s eyes dart to Lincoln. “What makes you say that?” She asks with a warning in her tone. Quieter, she adds on, “Don’t get his hopes up.”

Before Lincoln can respond to Octavia’s question, Clarke lets out a sudden and surprising gasp against Bellamy’s lips.

“Clarke?” He asks, heart in his throat. Though her eyes stay closed, her chest starts moving on it’s own again. Slowly, they watch as her face returns to a normal color. Barely able to believe that she’s breathing again, he moves his fingers to the pulse in her neck, needing to feel for himself the proof that she’s still here.

Still, her eyes remain shut, even as her blood rushes with the thumps of her heart against his fingers.

“Start talking,” Octavia says, but she’s not looking at Bellamy.

Which is good, because Bellamy couldn’t force his focus away from Clarke if he tried.

“Bellamy’s chest constriction stopped because they’d completed the bond, just as you said. Clarke’s was more advanced, so it took longer for the plant to wilt away inside her, meaning that she was still dying even as the bond was being completed. Once I could see her lungs filling up during CPR, it was obvious the Hanahaki was dying.”

“I don’t understand,” he says, eyes still on Clarke’s face. She looks like she’s sleeping. No longer convulsing, no longer in pain, no longer dying. He’s afraid if he glances away that it’ll all go wrong again. “I don’t understand any of it. How did we even both get Hanahaki in the first place? If we loved each other—” He lets out a pained breath. “It doesn’t make any fucking sense.”

His voice cuts out, hardly able to believe any of the last few minutes. It’s only now, in the slightly muted panic of the moment, that he can take stock of what this means.

“Let’s move her to a bed,” Lexa cuts in, taking command. “Now that she’s breathing again. And then Lincoln can give us his theory.

She looks sad as she stares down at Clarke, and he feels sorry for her. This probably isn’t how she imagined her wedding day. It’s a background concern, the grief and anger and despair still swirling too close to the surface of his mind, but even he isn’t so cruel that he feels nothing when he sees the woman Clarke was supposed to marry looking down at her prone form.

He nods to her once, trying to convey his appreciation without words. He’s not sure she really gets it, but she gives him a solemn nod back.

Lincoln moves forward to help, but Bellamy scowls at him, body curved over Clarke’s protectively. He’d been the one to breathe life back into her failing body, and now he doesn’t want anyone to touch her but him.

Lincoln, being sensible enough, backs off immediately, letting Bellamy do what he must. No one else moves close enough to try, and he’s pleased, in a primitive sort of way, that they know she is his to care for.

Picking Clarke’s limp body up carefully, treating her as though she’s made of the finest glass, he follows their group out of the room and towards Clarke’s chambers. When they arrive, he lays her gently down on the furs before brushing her hair out of her face again. She looks so peaceful for the first time since she fell, and it soothes the ache inside him. He kneels on the floor beside her, caressing her cheek all the while.

“So why did it happen?” He asks again, not taking his eyes from her. This is more time than he ever thought he’d get with her, and he’s not going to waste it. Every breath she takes in, deep and even, makes his eyes burn with more tears.

Lincoln tries to make sense of the question, reminding Bellamy that no one really knows exactly how soulbonds work. It’s all about balance — the same thing that he’d said all those weeks back when Bellamy had first asked.

As Lincoln rambles through his theory, the pieces start fitting together in Bellamy’s head.

The trouble isn’t about whether or not Clarke loved him. She did, and the Hanahaki is more than enough proof of that. Likewise, it’s not about his love for her, which, despite what he’d wanted to believe in the earliest days of denial, is boundless. He loves her, and he loved her even before the flowers made their appearance.

The trouble is in the art of falling. As far as anyone can tell, Hanahaki grows out of imbalance in a bond. If he loved Clarke while she didn’t return those feelings. If Clarke wanted him above all things while he was ambivalent. Those were the imbalances they had each privately feared.

And in the end, it wasn’t that at all. Sure, Hanahaki would grow in those situations too, but that wasn’t what had happened. Instead, the imbalance was all in their heads. They couldn’t let themselves fall with the fear that no one would be there to catch them. The soulbond couldn’t meet in the middle if they were afraid they would be the only one reaching out at all.

It wasn’t a genuine sense of indifference on either part that had almost killed them. No, it was the bullheaded belief that they were the only one feeling the connection. It was their inability to be the first person in the center, waiting for another hand to reach out.

“So you’re saying they’re both idiots,” Octavia says easily after the explanation hangs between them.

“It’s not my place to pass judgment on the Queen’s intelligence,” Lincoln replies dutifully. “But yes.”

“I knew it! I told him to talk to her before we’d even left Xandri.”

Bellamy wants to tell her it’s a bad time for _I told you so,_ but his throat feels too tight with unshed tears, so he keeps his focus on Clarke.

Lincoln nods to himself. “I told Clarke, too. She was just stubborn in her belief that the feeling wasn’t mutual.”

“You knew?” He asks, surprise in his voice. “You knew Clarke was dying?”

“I’m her best friend besides you, and obviously she wasn’t going to tell you because she was determined to not force you into something. Of course I knew.” Lincoln furrows his brow. “Actually, when you came to me to ask about weird diseases, I thought you’d realized she had it and wanted to know how to help her. But then you laughed at my explanation, and I got angry with you. I thought either you didn’t know she had it or didn’t care.”

“No, not at all,” he says quickly. “I’m sorry — I didn’t mean to seem callous. I was uncomfortable. You’d just handed me a death sentence wrapped in soulmate nonsense that I couldn’t understand. I didn’t know how to process it.”

“I understand. I’m sorry, too. If I had realized, maybe things would’ve been different. I didn’t know two people who are clearly in love could get it for each other in the first place, or else I might’ve noticed.”

“We all knew,” Octavia says. “If any of us had just been honest, the truth would’ve come out. We could’ve avoided this whole mess.”

She gestures around, and for the first time Bellamy remembers that Lexa is still here.

He looks up at her from his place beside Clarke. 

“I’m sorry,” he says sincerely. “For my part in this. I know that you care for her.”

“Yes, I do.” Her face is pinched. “But she must love you a lot, Bellamy Blake, to use the last days of her life to marry me so she could protect your people.”

He glances down at Clarke’s still form, the only movement coming from the rising and falling of her chest that still fills him with joy. A smile tugs at his lips.

“She must,” he agrees. “Even if I wish she’d been less self-sacrificing on my behalf.” Then, to Lexa, he continues. “But I’m still sorry. I hope… I’ve heard that you try to be a wise and fair ruler. I hope that you won’t hold my mistakes against Skaikru.”

“I made an oath to Clarke that her people will be my people. She didn’t swear one in return, but mine was spoken in good faith and accepted. Married or not, I will abide by it. The members of Skaikru are her people, too.”

He nods, heart warmed by the truth of that statement. “Thank you, Commander.”

She glances away, sadness in her expression. “I’m afraid I have to deal with the fallout now. Send someone to me when she’s woken up so I don’t have to worry. And—” she pauses, thinking over her words. “And tell her that I wish her every happiness now that she isn’t asphyxiating on my tower’s floor.”

She smiles at him, letting him know that it’s okay. She’s hurt, but she can see when it’s time to bow out gracefully. After all, it’s hard to argue against an aggressively public bout of Hanahaki that’s only cured by the love declarations of literal soulmates.

“I will,” he says, and she sweeps out of the room, a leader of her people once more.

“We should go, too,” Lincoln says, moving to grab Octavia’s hand. In a distant part of his brain, Bellamy wonders if they’ve given up the pretense of friendship now because he’s too busy to bother fighting against it.

(Octavia would probably argue that there had never been only the pretense of friendship, but at least in the past they’d been less overt with public affection.)

“We should?” Asks Octavia.

“Shouldn’t you stay? To make sure she’s okay? She hasn’t woken up yet.”

Lincoln pats his shoulder. “From what I can tell, she’s going to be fine. Her airways are clear and her breathing is normal. We’ll have to do a few tests when she wakes up to make sure the lack of oxygen hasn’t affected her brain functions, but the whole thing happened quicker than you probably remember, and I don’t have reason to think that she’ll wake up with any issues.”

“So she’s not—” he swallows heavily. “She’s not hurt?”

“Aches, probably, and bruising from the CPR, but those were necessary injuries. Maybe some broken ribs, if anything. There’s a lump on the side of her head from when she fell, but it doesn’t strike me as concerning. Mostly, I think she’s tired.”

“Then we’ll let her sleep,” Octavia says, before moving forward to kiss her brother’s cheek. “We’ll leave you two alone, but let us know if anything changes or if you need us. And for fuck’s sake, pull up a chair.”

Lincoln drags over a stool from in front of Clarke’s little dressing station, and Bellamy nods at him in thanks as he gets up from his knees.

Octavia smiles at him. “Good luck.”

***

He sits in the chair beside her for the first few hours, overthinking every interaction they’d had since around the time of his first petal.

It doesn’t change anything, of course, but he can’t help analyzing those moments forwards and backwards, trying to understand how’d they’d both fucked up so colossally. 

A member of the Commander’s staff brings him a plate of food around dinnertime, and he eats it halfheartedly. 

Eventually, the sun dips below the remains of Polis, and the room grows dark.

He knows it would be best to stay in his chair, at least until he and Clarke have the chance to speak, but her bed is so big and he is so tired. For the first time in weeks, he isn’t in pain, isn’t struggling to breathe, and now his body is catching up on all the exhaustion that this disease and his attempts to remedy it have caused him.

And really, the bed is huge. He could lay diagonally across it and still hardly touch her.

He sets his plate aside, still partly covered in the remains of his dinner, and climbs into the empty space beside her.

At first, he tries to keep his eyes on the ceiling, feeling like the invasion of her personal space means that he should avert his gaze as some kind of recompense.

It only lasts a few minutes at most before he’s drawn back. Her face, placid with sleep, brings him comfort. This is rest, not death. She isn’t going anywhere.

As his eyes grow heavier while the shadows in the room become more pronounced, he grabs her hand in his. The motion is unconscious — simply the desire to maintain contact as he slips away.

***

In his dreams, they’re in the field of flowers again.

He sees her, head turned to the side to look at him with her bright blue eyes.

She repeats the same words from the last time they were here — the words that broke his heart to hear from her lips.

_“You’re right. I won’t have time to miss you at all.”_

He understands now in a way that he couldn’t before. She never would’ve had the time to miss him — not when she’d been as marked for death as he was.

He smiles sadly, watching as she reaches out a tentative hand to brush the curls away from his eyes.

“You’ll have time, Clarke. I swear.”

***

“Bell.”

“Hm?”

A hand shakes his shoulder.

“Wake up.”

It takes him a moment, and then…

“Clarke?”

His eyes pop open instantly, body twisted to the side just as it had been when he’d fallen asleep beside her.

Clarke looks over at him, her eyes wide in the darkness of the room. They’re a mirror of his dream, staring at each other across the little gap between them. There are no flowers, no meadow — only pillows and furs in the black of night — and yet he feels just as connected to her here as he does in the dreams.

“Are you okay?” She asks.

“Am _I_ okay? Clarke, are you okay? You almost died today.”

“Kinda hard to forget,” she mutters under her breath. “Yeah, I’m okay. Sore, but fine. I’ll live, and I guess that’s the important thing.”

“Should I get Lincoln? Or one of Lexa’s healers?”

“No, I— No. Not yet, please.”

“Of course,” he reassures, wanting to put her at ease. “If you really feel like you don’t need it.”

“I don’t.” She squeezes his hand, and he has to stop himself from jolting at the feeling. He’d forgotten that he’d fallen asleep with her fingers twisted between his. “Are they mad? Have I ruined it?”

“Mad? No, Clarke. Nobody’s mad.” He pauses before qualifying the statement. “Nobody important, anyway. Lexa said she understands, and that she’d still honor the vow to protect both Trikru and Skaikru under the coalition.”

“Really?” She asks skeptically. “I was nervous that this was all for nothing. The alliance— that’s the only reason I did any of this.”

“I know,” he says, finding the courage to bring his hand up to her cheek, letting his fingers run along her pale skin to smooth away the tension.

“I’m so tired, Bellamy.”

“You can sleep. Nobody expects anything of you right now.”

She smiles sadly. “Not tired like that.”

“How then?” He asks.

 _“Osir laik branwoda.”_ The words come out with a resigned exasperation. At his confused look, she translates the thought. “We are… uh, very dumb.”

“Yeah,” he laughs. “Potentially the two dumbest people still alive on this planet. I almost—” he chokes, the laugh now coming out more like a sob. “I saw you die today. All because of how stupid we were both being. I almost lost you forever.”

“But I’m not dead. And I still remember you, still remember all of our time together, so—”

He reaches into his pocket, never having changed out of his clothes from the wedding. Crushed up inside are some of the little blue flowers he’d had to hide away before the ceremony started.

He pulls one out, slowly moving his hand to present it to her.

“We’re a matched set,” he says as she takes it, a look of confusion on her face. “Like I said, dumbest people on this planet.”

He explains his own Hanahaki — how’d he’d first noticed it, when he realized what it meant for his impending death, when he’d actually accepted that it wasn’t something he could pretend wasn’t real, the poisons, and the realization that he would still follow her to Polis to see her marry someone else.

“I thought I was going to die here, but it would’ve been worth it if you were happy. Or at least that’s what I kept telling myself.”

A lot of his story confuses her or makes her angry at him, especially around the topic of the poisons that he’d taken with very little knowledge of healing or botany. She asks a lot of questions, and along the way she fills him in on her own experience.

She’d realized she cared for him quite early on — earlier than he had, certainly. The first flower came around the time that he’d started hooking up more frequently with Raven. The thought almost makes him laugh — after all, Clarke being jealous over _Raven_ sounds unbelievable. She was just using him to get over Finn. No one had thought there was even a chance of anything serious there.

Well, no one except Clarke.

“We’d been having such a nice night before you disappeared to help Jasper get home, and then suddenly Raven was going to your tent with you. I thought I had the wrong idea.”

“You didn’t.”

“And then I saw the first flower petal, and I knew you didn’t love me. That’s when I started avoiding you. I was just… I don’t know. Stressed. And sad. But then _you_ started missing council meetings, and I figured there wasn’t hope anymore. So I accepted Lexa’s deal to marry her in exchange for Skaikru’s welcome into the coalition. I thought if we rushed it enough, I’d live through the ceremony.” At this, she laughs sardonically, clearly thinking about how well that had turned out. “And I named Anya my successor so there wouldn’t be any issues after my death.”

The idea of her planning out the exact steps to her own funeral makes him shudder, even if he had been doing the same. He doesn’t want to imagine her gone. Face pale and lips blue, just as they had been earlier. Except it never would’ve stopped, the image haunting him until his own death.

He can imagine — grimly, _morbidly_ — the scene of his body, wracked and spluttering with flowered coughs, curled around her corpse. If only his own Hanahki hadn’t disappeared in his chest before it could finally be useful. He would’ve laid there until they were both cold.

It makes him sick to visualize.

She explains how, just once, on their final night in Xandri, she’d chickened out and tried to tell him, hoping that maybe he could learn to love her quickly enough.

“But when I got to your cabin door, I could hear voices inside. Yours… and a woman’s, too.”

“A woman?” He asks, completely bewildered. By so late in the story, he’d already completely given up casual flings, too busy either obsessing over Clarke or trying not to die. “Oh. It must’ve been Octavia. The last day in Xandri was when she realized I was dying.”

“Of course,” she says in a moment of realization. “Of course it was. I’m so stupid.”

“You’re not,” he’s quick to say, his hand moving to cup her jaw. “It was Octavia that time, but that doesn’t change the fact that I didn’t— I shouldn’t have—”

“Bellamy, you didn’t owe me anything before. I knew that.”

“I do if I’m your soulmate.”

She shakes her head. “That’s not a reason to be with someone. Not enough of a reason, anyway.”

“How is this still so hard?” He asks in a huff. “We’ve completed the bond or whatever, and somehow we’re still dancing around the truth.”

“I don’t know.”

“Here’s what I know,” he says, thumb moving along her cheekbone. He can’t _not_ touch her right now. “I watched you almost die today over something that I could’ve stopped. I would’ve—” He pauses, taking a deep breath. “If you hadn’t come back, I think I never would’ve left that spot. I’d have died there with you.”

“They wouldn’t have let you. No, you would’ve figured out how to keep going.”

“Even if they made me leave — if they’d picked me up and _forced_ me away — my mind would’ve never strayed from that room. I’d always be sitting right there next to you, helpless and alone.”

“Don’t say that,” she says, tears leaking out from the corners of her eyes. He brushes one away when it rolls towards his thumb.

“I love you, Clarke. Don’t you get it? It’s not about the Hanahaki or the bond or the soulmates. I love you. I want to be wherever you are.”

She lets her eyes fall closed, her hand coming up to hold his against her cheek.

“I never thought we’d get this,” she whispers. “I don’t really know what to do with myself now.”

His heart lurches, but he’s already put it all out there. He’s hardly withholding to save his pride at this point, so he asks the only question that really matters.

“Do you love me? That’s the only thing that matters. Whatever comes after that is just detail.”

Her eyes flutter open again, staring up at him in the dark with eyes completely unguarded. 

“I do. You know I do.” Her hand still over his, she turns to press her lips against the center of his palm. “I love you.”

The smile that shines on her face radiates sunlight in the darkness. He’s sure his matches. There are tears on his cheeks too, the relief of the moment overwhelming.

She stretches towards him, her lips only centimeters from his before she pauses. His hand sweeps down her neck and back before resting itself in the dip of her waist. The warmth of her skin beneath the silk of her black wedding dress makes his palm tingle.

“We really are so stupid,” she says, and he can feel her breaths against his mouth as he watches her. It’s the greatest reminder that, after everything, she’s still alive.

“No arguments here,” he murmurs.

Her eyes linger on his a moment more before they drop to his lips. All at once, the tension that’s been inside him for so long finally snaps, and he swoops forward to close the distance between them.

The touch of her lips to his is immediately gratifying, the pieces of his life finally slotting into place. Like a puzzle, he can see the picture now: a life in Xandri with his friends and his family and _Clarke,_ the brightest spot in an already happy future.

It won’t be perfect, certainly. There’s too much politics around them for anything to be truly perfect. But it’ll be good. It’ll be _worth it._

He drags her closer until her chest is pressed against his, and her fingers tangle themselves in his hair.

“I love you,” he whispers as he starts kissing his way down her neck. They’re the only words that really matter.

He sucks a bruise into the skin of her throat, desperate to leave a mark there. She lets out a little gasp, holding his head against her as he works his way further down.

Breathily, she says, “I love you, too.”

His fingers play with the strap of her silk dress, teasing along its edges and letting them occasionally dip beneath. He trails them down, following the neckline that dips low enough to highlight her breasts.

Her breathing becomes heavier in the stillness of the room as his lips make the same journey.

“Is this okay?” He asks, brushing kisses along the line where skin meets silk.

“It’s not enough.”

“What do you want?”

She groans. “Want you to touch me, Bell.”

He smiles at the nickname, nipping lightly at the top of her breast before moving his hand down to the hem of her dress, rucked up around her thighs already from when they’d rushed her into the room.

“Gonna have to take this off, Princess.”

“Please.” Her hands are already grabbing at it anxiously, trying to pull it off as quickly as possible. He slows her movements, guiding the dress off her bit by bit. By the time he’s pulled it carefully over her head and thrown it on the floor, his eyes are glued to what he’s uncovered.

“You’re so pretty, Princess,” he mutters, head dropping down as his mouth seeks out her nipple. He lets his tongue swirl around it gently before grazing it with his teeth. Her hips shift under him as she keens at the sensation. Her fingers pull at his hair, conversely trying to hold him closer and move him where she wants him. 

“What do you need, sweetheart?”

“Your mouth. Please, your mouth,” she whines, trying to guide him down.

He smirks down at her, pressing a chaste kiss to her lips. “Of course. Been thinking about this for ages.”

He moves further down, pulling her scant underclothes off as he goes.

His fingers trail along her cunt teasingly, not letting her get too much of anything despite the way her hips follow him for more.

“What did you imagine?” She asks, groaning as his fingers dance lightly over her clit. “When you… when you thought about it.”

“I didn’t think about it much after the Hanahaki set in,” he says honestly, letting his movements grow bolder in order to pull attention away from the words, not wanting either of them to get lost in those thoughts again. He bends down, his breath ghosting over her sensitive skin. “But before that, I used to think about this all the time. Spreading you out on the council room table and taking my time with you. Making you scream so loud that the guards outside can hear you.” He circles his tongue over her clit once, twice, and then pulls away again. Her hands desperately try to pull him back in, but he just looks up at her from between her legs. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Letting me eat you out in the same place we have all our fights? Where anyone walking past could hear you?”

“It would be—“ she stops, whimpering as he dips back down to suck her clit into his mouth, lavishing it with attention. _“Fuck._ It would be the first time you… you ever shut up in there,” she pants.

“You want me to shut up, Princess?”

She nods frantically, legs wrapping around him so he won’t back off again.

“Your wish is my command.”

He shuts up pretty well after that, too focused on his efforts between her thighs, but she more than makes up for it with all her little noises. The sounds thrum through his body like a drug, making him dizzier than any dose of _wanlibluma_ possibly could.

She comes with his fingers in her cunt and his mouth stoking the fire just above.

He watches the way her chest rises and falls as she tries to catch her breath. It’s the only way he ever intends to make her breathless again — although, to be fair, he hopes to do it as often as possible, wherever possible, whenever possible.

Not one to let him rest on his laurels, she grabs onto his shoulder immediately and tries to pull him up again. Though there’s hardly any force behind it, he goes where she orders, letting his mouth crash into hers again so she can taste herself.

“You know, I’ve thought about this, too,” she says against his lips.

“Oh?” He asks, pulling back to look down at her curiously. It’s not surprising — not after everything else that’s happened today — but he’s definitely interested in hearing her out.

“Yeah,” she says, smiling up at him serenely before hooking her leg around his body and flipping them. “But I’m a warrior, so I like to be in charge sometimes, too.”

It’s a scramble to get him naked as quickly as possible, but even with all the buckles, she’s adept at removing grounder clothing.

When she sinks her body down onto his cock — slowly enough that he almost reaches out to move her quicker, knowing that she’s doing it just to tease him — he decides that she can be in charge whenever she wants.

***

***

“This should probably be more traumatizing than it is.”

“That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think? This is hardly a battle scene.”

He looks around them, gesturing emphatically at their surroundings.

“You know firsthand how fucked this is.”

She laughs brightly at his words, brushing her fingers over the flowers surrounding them. He smiles at her, glad to see her so carefree.

“It all worked out in the end.”

He presses a kiss against her shoulder before flopping down onto the cool ground of the meadow. Though winter is now on it’s way, the sun shines down on them and the wildflowers continue to grow. He hadn’t expected that when they’d come to earth — flowers were meant to die in winter, withering away like the forget-me-nots in his chest, but Clarke says that winter in Xandri and the surrounding Trikru territories has always been like this. They may see snow in the depths of the season, but otherwise the land will keep surviving in any way that it can, decades after radiation attempted to destroy it. 

“You don’t find it hilariously masochistic that we came out here to surround ourselves with flowers a mere _month_ after they tried to kill us?” He asks, smiling as he takes her hand in his.

“No,” she laughs. “After weeks of spitting up my own flowers, it’s like coming home.”

“Don’t tell me you miss them,” he teases.

“If I still had them, I wouldn’t have you.” She leans over, touching her lips to his gently. His hand goes to the back of her head to try to keep her there longer, but she breaks away after a moment, a twinkle in her gaze as she looks down at him.

“Fair trade.” He pulls a little bloom from the ground beside him and holds it up to her in offering. She takes it from him carefully before setting it aside to gather more. “What are you doing? Trying to one-up my flower with a bouquet?”

“You’ll see.”

He switches between watching the clouds lazily roam across the sky and watching her hands work, pulling up the prettiest flowers and bundling them together. Before long, she starts twisting their stems, weaving them into place.

This might be their first truly peaceful day since arriving home weeks before. First there had been bridges to mend between other clans, not wanting to offend anyone with the sudden cancellation of the wedding. The whole thing was surprisingly difficult — many of the clan leaders had been far more offended on Lexa’s behalf than she herself had been. 

Then again, Clarke had made the point that they were probably just using the event as attempted leverage to get what they want out of her, and it made a lot of sense.

For all that they had tried to make Clarke beg and scrape before them for forgiveness, she had refused to do so, reminding them of her status as queen and the honor that comes with forming a soulbond. While there may have been some deceit at play in trying to strengthen Skaikru’s relationship to the coalition through the attempted marriage, it hadn’t harmed anyone else, and therefore they hardly had the right to make such outrageous demands to her.

Then there had been her own people to return to, many of whom had questions about the queen’s relationship with the leader of Skaikru and what it meant for them. Though Bellamy could hardly see how it would impact anyone on the day to day, there had certainly been hurdles to jump through in order to secure his own place by her side.

But now, finally, they can spend an afternoon relaxing, far from the council rooms and Clarke’s guards and the stresses that have followed them like a dark cloud for so long.

“Are you happy?” He asks, staring up at the sky, arm folded under his head.

“What, today? I’m very happy.”

“I’m glad,” he smiles. “But I meant generally. When I thought I was going to die and leave you behind, I wanted to imagine that you’d have a long and happy life after I was gone, even if it was no longer something that I could help you achieve. And now we’re both here, and I guess I want to be certain that I’m not wasting this chance to give you what you deserve.”

“You’re not. Of course you’re not.” Her hands stop their weaving and she leans over him again, blocking out some of the light. From behind her, the sun’s golden rays set her hair aflame. She’s on fire, the haloed goddess who’d ensnared him before he’d even known he was in danger. “I’m not saying every day of my life is perfect, because that’s not how leadership works,” she continues. “But I’m happy. In all the ways that matter most, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.”

He reaches up, tugging on a loose lock of hair. “Is it because of me?” He asks cheekily.

“Cocky isn’t a good look on you.”

“Really?”

She blushes, deciding not to answer, and her inability to do so with any degree of honesty makes him laugh.

“Is it me, though? At all? I’d feel better if I knew I was a net-positive in your life.”

She takes his hand in hers, still smiling down at him. “Of course it’s you, _branwoda._ Who else?”

“And _branwoda_ means handsome? Or loving boyfriend? Light of my life?”

The laugh she lets out fills him with butterflies — a vast improvement on being filled with plants, he’ll admit. 

“It means idiot, but keep trying.”

“You love me.”

“Yeah, but no one said I had taste.”

“Get down here,” he says, mock irritation in his voice as he tugs her in for another kiss. She goes willingly, joy on her lips as they meet his.

“I love you,” he sighs, the whispered words papering over the cracks in his soul. He feels tethered to her now more than ever — not because of the bond, but because of their choice.

“I love you too,” she says before pulling away.

“No, come back.”

“Oh, stop whining.” She grabs both of his hands and pulls him up until he’s sitting beside her once more. From beside her, she picks up the product of her weaving, the flowers now artfully arranged into a crown, the winter blooms delicate and lovely. Gently, she places it in his curls, the white of the petals standing out against his dark hair.

“You look beautiful,” she says, leaning in to kiss him on his nose.

“Where’s yours, Your Highness?”

From behind her, she pulls out a second crown — smaller than the first but equally lovely. He takes it from her hands before placing it reverently on her head.

“Aren’t I beautiful too?” She asks with a smirk.

“You’re always beautiful.”

“You’re so cheesy,” she laughs.

“You’re a queen — it’s inevitable that you look good in a crown!” He pauses, thinking for a moment. “Actually, if you’re the queen and I’m your soulmate, do I get a title?”

“Yeah,” she replies easily. “Everyone already knows exactly what you are.”

“Oh? And what’s that? _Branwoda_ again?”

She pulls him forward by his shirtfront, smiling against his jaw before placing a kiss there.

“Mine, obviously.”

He laughs loudly at the words. Being hers is better than having a title anyhow, at least in his opinion. He’s already the de facto leader of Skaikru _and_ the person who forces Clarke to put down her work in the evenings so she can eat and sleep — he hardly needs more responsibilities to add to his growing list.

“Do I at least get to keep the flower crown?”

She keeps pressing little kisses into his skin. “They’re all yours. Although I have to say, what a _remarkable_ change of heart since ten minutes ago when flowers were your worst nightmare.”

“I don’t know,” he says easily, pulling her lips to his. ”I guess they're growing on me.”

“Now that they’re forming the trappings of royalty?”

“No,” he smiles, holding her close. “Now that they’re a gift from you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading, and I very much hope you enjoyed this tale! I had a lot of fun planning it out!
> 
> **This is the last chapter of the story. Chapter 5 is the alternate ending that includes MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH. If you do not wish to read that addition, you are free to end your journey here! Thanks for reading!**
> 
> Please give all of your love to [Poppy](https://poppykru.tumblr.com/) for the amazing art she made for this story! You can prompt her for all your content needs (or myself for fics) by making a donation through [The 100 Fic for BLM](https://t100fic-for-blm.carrd.co/).
> 
> Your comments and kudos are always SO appreciated. I would love to know what you thought.


	5. heaven or hell or somewhere in between (don't go without me)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Alternate ending for "ribs for a trellis, flowers for a grave" that includes major character death!**
> 
> This is not a continuation of the story, but rather an alternate ending in which Bellamy is not able to save Clarke at the wedding. This ending deals with **death, depression, and non-violent suicide.** Please do not read this if you are not interested in MCD angst.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY BIRTHDAY LEA!
> 
> Would you believe that this MCD alternate ending was actually a birthday request? Only the best for our resident angst queen.
> 
> Reminder that the actual ending (the _happy_ ending) is in chapter 4. If this version is too sad for you, just go back a chapter and enjoy the version where everything works out perfectly.
> 
> The chapter starts at the wedding, and parts of it are copied verbatim, mainly because it would've been impossible to drop into the middle of the hanahaki scene without it feeling weird. If you're coming from the last chapter and don't want to re-read what you've just seen, search for the single "*", which is where the text diverges.
> 
> This ending was inspired by The Hunchback of Notre Dame (in particular the musical), and there are references to it throughout.

Bellamy watches the wedding proceedings with a lump in his throat. He’d known it would be difficult, but the reality of losing her… of saying goodbye...

A part of him is ready for the pain to finally be over. It wouldn’t be ideal in the middle of a wedding, but the idea of watching his soulmate—

No. Soulmate isn’t the right word. It implies that the universe chose Clarke for him and that he had no agency in any of it, and he knows that to be untrue.

He would choose her. In a thousand lifetimes, over and over, he would choose her. Even if it ended the same way every time, he knows that if he met her, he would fall in love with her. Would be willing to die for her. It’s just who she is — there is no version of Bellamy in the universe who wouldn’t be enthralled by her.

The corners of his lips turn up, even as he prepares to watch his love — his heart — pledge herself to someone else.

Her eyes flick over to him, and he lets the little smile sit on his face. This is how he wants to remember her: hair unbound, face unadorned, and yet somehow the scariest, strongest, loveliest person he’s ever known.

Lexa drops to her knees.

Lincoln explains that in a typical ceremony, Clarke would have to pledge herself to the _heda_ first. She, after all, is a supplicant to the Commander.

But Lexa insisted that she be allowed to make her vows first as a show of good faith to her bride, and though Titus hadn’t been pleased with the arrangement, he’d eventually accepted the change.

Lexa’s wide eyes stare up at Clarke imploringly. 

“I swear fealty to you, Clarke, _Haiplana kom Trikru._ I vow to treat your needs as my own and your people as my people. _Ai badan yu op en nou moun.”_ Lexa kisses her hand softly. Clarke looks a little choked up at the words.

 _Ai badan yu op en nou moun._ I serve you and no other. 

He only knows the phrase because Clarke had made him say it to her when they’d first started working together. He’d rolled his eyes and parroted the words back as sarcastically as possible, but Clarke hadn’t seemed to mind.

In fact, that might’ve been the first time he can remember making her laugh.

A moment passes before Lexa’s eyebrows scrunch together in confusion. Titus looks to Clarke, clearly waiting for something.

Bellamy knows this part, too. Clarke has to say a phrase to formally accept Lexa’s vows before she can kneel and make her own. Her eyes flit back and forth, as though she’s forgotten what comes next. The hand not being held by Lexa balls up in a little fist at her side.

Finally Clarke opens her mouth to speak, her expression strained.

“I accept your oaths.” Lexa still looks bemused, though she doesn’t move from her place at Clarke’s feet. “My people—” 

She pauses, grasping Lexa’s hand more firmly in her own. “My people are your people.”

The crowd shifts uneasily, wondering why the Queen had hesitated.

Though he’s at the front of the Skaikru congregants, he isn’t particularly close to the dais. The circle around the brides had needed to be big enough to fit all thirteen delegations, and thus there are several meters between the guests and Clarke.

Still, he can see the way her eyes start darting around. The way her shoulders shake slightly with nerves. The way she takes a step back from Lexa, like she’s suddenly uncertain about her surroundings.

“Clarke?” Lexa asks quietly. Her grip on Clarke’s hand doesn’t loosen, but her eyes are concerned.

“I—”

Her eyes keep flitting around until they finally land on him.

He’s not sure why she spent so long looking, as though he wasn’t nearly front and center, but once she’s got him in her sight, she doesn’t look away.

“Bell?” Octavia asks, pulling on his arm.

Clarke splutters up a cough, the sound barely there.

Then, without any warning, she crumples to the ground, her head smacking harshly against the concrete floor.

His heart stops.

His throat _burns._

“Clarke?” He forces out through pain and shock. Members of the various delegations start yelling in panic. Someone thinks she’s sick, carrying an infectious disease. Another is yelling about the queen somehow being shot through the open side of the building by a sharpshooter, despite the fact that there seems to be neither arrow nor bullet lodged in her chest.

Someone to the left of the room — from Delfikru or Podakru, maybe — pulls out a sword. Others are quick to mirror the action, not wanting to be the last person armed if things get ugly.

Lexa leans over her, trying to figure out what’s wrong. She takes Clarke’s pulse — which is fast — and then checks to see if she’s breathing. The panicked look she shoots at Titus makes Bellamy think that she isn’t.

Her dress is loose and light. There are no ties or stays to wrench apart to ease breathing, but Lexa runs her hands over Clarke’s torso as though she could find something that would end her suffering.

His feet are rooted to the floor, completely frozen in his fear.

Then she coughs, and the ground is covered over in purple flowers.

“Bell,” Octavia says, still pulling at his shirtsleeve, her voice more insistent.

He can’t look away, the ache in his chest growing. He is utterly removed from his body, watching this scene from a distance. 

“Clarke?” Lexa asks, panicked as she watches the pile of flowers grow with every exhale Clarke manages. They’re coming up a handful at a time, the flowers themselves considerably bigger than those that Bellamy has been dealing with. “Clarke?”

There are dozens of flowers on the floor before her, and the audience starts tittering again, as though the spectacle and indignity of Hanahaki at the Commander’s wedding supersedes the reality of watching someone die.

Or maybe they really just don’t care.

“Clarke?” Lexa asks again, seeming to be caught in a loop. “Who—? Who is—?”

His brain short circuits for a second, so horrified by everything that is happening. All along he’s loved Clarke, and all along she’s loved someone else? He can’t fit together the puzzle pieces in his head quickly enough. Everything is suddenly sideways, the static in his mind overpowering all else. He wants to go to her, but his limbs are useless, unable to fathom the tragedy that has struck all at once.

“Bellamy!” Octavia says finally, snapping him out of his stupor so he will look at her.

“Somebody—” Lexa yells, voice filled with the urgency that betrays her fear, “—find the Queen’s soulmate! _Now!”_

“Get up there, you idiot!” Octavia says, now using all her body weight to push him forward. “She’s dying!”

“I’m not…” he says, still in shock. “It’s not me. I’m not her soulmate.”

“How do you know?”

She keeps pushing him forward, his feet cooperating unthinkingly until he reaches Clarke’s prone body. Without thought, he drops down onto his knees beside her, his hands hovering over her body as she convulses.

“If I was, we wouldn’t have… wouldn’t be—”

He gestures helplessly to the flowers.

Octavia kneels beside him. “Worry about that later. She’s dying, and you’re the only one who can potentially stop it.”

“Clarke?” He asks, hand shaking nervously until he places it on her ribs. She’s breathing again, but the flowers keep coming. When her mouth is open, he can see the plant at the back of her throat, having climbed all the way up until it sits just behind her tongue.

“Everybody out!” Lexa yells to the room at large. He can hardly focus on what’s going on behind him.

“Bell.” It’s the first time she’s spoken since she accepted Lexa’s oath, and he can hardly believe she’s managing it at all with how badly her body is shaking. Her voice is so quiet amidst all the other sounds in the room: the fighting behind them as people make their way to the doors, the attempts to keep the peace, and even her own coughs. “Sorry, Bell. So sorry.”

Tears leak out of the corners of her eyes as she chokes.

“Clarke, please,” he says brokenly, shaking his head because he doesn’t know what to do. “Please, I—”

“My… fault,” she forces out. Another six flowers come up while she speaks. Orchids, he realizes absently. She smiles up at him through all the heaving that wracks her small frame. “Miss you.”

And that’s when it clicks.

God, he’s so stupid.

There’s no logic to it — at least no logic that he can think of in the chaos of the moment — but he really is her soulmate. She’s dying right now because she thinks he doesn’t love her.

It almost makes a laugh bubble up in his chest. As though it’s even possible that he doesn’t want her.

“Clarke, I love you,” he gasps out, the words unburdening him immediately. “Please, I love you, Clarke. You’re awake — you can hear me. It has to stop now. It’s supposed to stop.”

She stares up at him for a moment, but the flowers don’t stop. He brings his hand to her cheek in a panic as they only seem to increase in speed. She chokes around them, no longer able to breathe in the momentary pauses between coughs. 

Her eyes go wide, terrified as it continues. Each gasp is painful as she tries helplessly to let any air fill her lungs, the constriction that he knows so well cutting off all sense until all she can do is panic.

“Clarke,” he says in a rush, fingers brushing away the dozens of flowers that are still coming up. “Clarke, please. I love you. _I love you.”_

She grasps desperately at his hand with fingers that have lost all dexterity, and something about the action makes him feel sick. 

_She doesn’t want to be alone when she dies. She wants him to hold her hand._

“It’s supposed to stop,” he says, tears welling up in his eyes. “It’s supposed to stop! I love her — make it stop! Please, I’m—”

He looks around at the faces there. Lexa, Titus, Octavia, Lincoln.

Lincoln.

“You have to do something,” he begs, looking right at the man. “Please, there has to be something we can do.”

Lincoln looks at the scene before him with distress in his eyes. “There isn’t,” he says sadly. “There’s no time now even for an emergency removal of the flower.” Clarke spits up more flowers, the stem of the plant now growing up her tongue like a snake. “And even if we could, she didn’t—” he pauses. He takes a deep breath, looking down at his friend, his Queen. “She didn’t want that.”

“No!” He shouts, suddenly angry. “There has to be something. There has to be another way.” He looks down at her face, lips a frightening blue color. There’s naked fear in her eyes as she clings frantically to his hand, begging him to make it stop. “This isn’t how it ends.”

Clarke’s nails dig into the skin of his hand, her breath coming in in sharp, ragged gasps, the sounds a person makes just before the end.

“Clarke,” he says, trying to keep her eyes focused. “Hey, Clarke. I need you to keep breathing through it, okay? Okay? Just listen to my voice. It’s all going to be alright in a moment, I swear.”

She nods, though her breathing gets more and more shallow. The rest of her face starts matching the blue hue of her lips.

“Please,” he chokes out on a sob, but she can only manage another moment before her head lulls to the side, eyes fluttering closed.

“Clarke, no,” he says frantically, patting her cheeks in an effort to bring her back to him. “Don’t close your eyes. Just keep looking at me.”

The words are useless though. She’s passed out, her chest barely moving. If she doesn’t breathe now, she’ll die.

“It’s too late,” comes Lexa’s shocked voice. Staring down at the blue face of her fiance, she shudders, eyes filled with tears. “It’s too late — she’s dying.”

“No she’s _not!_ ” Distraught, he immediately moves to her chest, doing compressions without thought. “She’s not gonna die! I’m not losing her.” 

He shifts to put his mouth on hers, determined to force some air into her lungs if it’s the last thing he does. He can’t let her die. Not when he loves her. Not when she, above almost anyone he knows, deserves the chance to live.

Not when his cowardice is the thing that’s killing her.

His mouth against hers, he can’t help but think that it’s a pale imitation of a first kiss. He’ll never get a kiss — he’ll only ever have this.

In a fairytale, the press of his lips would be enough. 

But this isn’t a fairytale.

He starts the compressions again, tears rolling down his cheeks. “You can’t go, Clarke. You can’t. I don’t want to do this without you.”

Octavia puts her hand on his arm, trying to calm him as though he’s a frightened animal. “She’s gone, Bell. It’s over.”

“It’s not over!” He slams his hand against her chest in despair. “Wake up, Clarke! You’re not gonna die like this.” His hand slams down again.

He cradles her head in his hands. She looks so small, so fragile. Not at all the steady, fearsome queen. 

A sob bursts out of him at the thought, and he lets his forehead rest against hers for a second. One of his tears lands on her cheek like a drop of dew. “You’re not gonna die like this.”

“Bell—”

 _“No!”_ He screams, trying again with the compressions. “I can’t let her die. I can’t, O. _I can’t feel it anymore.”_

She looks alarmed, though he doesn’t notice it, his eyes hyper-focused on only one thing. 

“Can’t feel what?”

He keeps up his compressions, unwilling to imagine anything else. It’s going to work. It has to work.

He lets out another sob, the sound anguished.

“My flower. I can’t— I can’t feel the flower anymore. It’s _gone,_ Octavia, don’t you see?”

There’s an ache in his chest, so heavy it’s almost debilitating. But it isn’t the Hanahaki — of that he’s certain. Quietly, while the love of his life dies on the floor, his own flower had curled in on itself until it was too tiny to notice.

“Bellamy, that’s a good thing. If it’s gone, the bond must be complete.”

“It’s not,” he cries, hands still pushing against her chest uselessly until he again presses his lips to hers for the space of three breaths. “It’s not.”

“I don’t understand.”

“She’s… She’s…”

The words get caught in his throat, unable to admit the truth.

_She’s dying._

No, not really.

_She’s dead._

He’s not sure any amount of CPR will save her now, but his hands keep going. It’s the only thing he has left — the only hope.

“My flower is gone. I can’t— I don’t want to do this without her. She’s going to die here because of me and I can’t even curl up on the ground next to her and wait for the end. It’s _gone.”_

He lets out a wet laugh at the horrible irony of having the cure to his own affliction only because of her death. He doesn’t want to stay here if she’s gone — for the first time, the gaping emptiness in his chest is a curse, not a blessing. He would give anything to feel that constriction growing tighter and tighter as Clarke’s face turns a deeper shade of blue.

Anywhere she is, he wants to follow. In Xandri, in Polis, even in death.

He pushes back a strand of her hair, his fingers uncontrollably shaking against the softness of her skin.

“Please, Clarke. Not without me.”

Then he moves again to open her mouth, trying to force another few breaths into her tired lungs.

*

Nothing happens. There’s no spark of life, no gasp of air in her lungs to bring her back.

There’s only silence. A cruel, aching silence. He does not hear the rasp of her tired voice or the soft beating of her heart. Her skin turns a pallid, waxy sort of grey, and when he opens her eyes, they stare up at him with a blank sheen.

He chokes around nothing, and that is somehow all the worse. “Not without me.”

Then he hunches over, folding himself around her limp body. It’ll grow cold soon. It’ll become stiff, the joints — _her_ joints — locked into place.

But he doesn’t move. He just wraps himself around her ever tighter, curling into her body like he can keep it warm, keep it alive, if only he holds her to him. They can share his heat, his breaths, his life. That’s what they were made to do as soulmates. One entity split between two bodies. They were meant to spend eternity wrapped in each other just like this.

“She’s gone, Bell.” He isn’t listening, but Octavia persists, even as he shakes his head, digging his face into Clarke’s collarbone so that he’ll never have to face her. It’s better here — better when their skin is touching. “She’s gone. You have to let go.”

He doesn’t move. He doesn’t weep. He doesn’t even acknowledge the people he knows still surround them — the people who will want to take her from him.

But he can feel it. Can feel the way a little light within him — something he’d never even noticed before — has gone dimmer and dimmer until it finally extinguished itself.

_She’s gone._

But she’s not. She’s his soulmate. She loves him, and he loves her. 

If she’s gone — if she’s truly gone because of the hanahaki…

Then that means he’s killed her.

She’s not gone as long as he keeps holding her. As long as he can keep her warm. She isn’t.

He takes in a ragged breath, the feeling like acid in his lungs. It’s wrong that it’s suddenly so easy. He doesn’t deserve that. What he deserves is to feel as terrified as she had, gasping for any hope of life.

But it’s fine. It’s fine. She isn’t gone if he’s still here. If he’s still holding her.

Because he knows he can’t live without her, and the universe wouldn’t be so cruel as to make him try. 

It wouldn’t. He has to believe that, because the alternative is too unbearable to consider. It would rip him apart until jagged, poisoned edges are all that remain.

It wouldn’t be a life to live without her.

He nuzzles further into her skin, praying for it to stay warm, but he can feel the way it's already cooling. Not a lot; not so soon. But a little. Enough that he tries to wipe the knowledge from his mind if only for now.

“You have to let go, Bellamy,” he hears. The words come to him through a fog, and it doesn’t stop the hand that runs through her golden hair. So beautiful — fit for a queen. “They need to take her away so the _heda_ can do damage control with the other clans.”

The words don’t make any sense. Where would they take her? Where else is she meant to be but right here, held in the circle of his arms, his body draped over hers like a protective blanket?

“Don’t take her,” he whispers plaintively. “Don’t take her from me.”

“Then you need to stand up. You need to carry her back to her rooms.”

He doesn’t want to stand, or carry, or move. He wants to lay right here beside her until the hanahaki takes him too. He wants to hold her until his body is as cold and unresponsive as her own. He wants to fill the gaping hole in his chest with her touch until it is all that he can feel for the rest of his short, sad life.

There is nothing else. There is no future after this. There is only now; only the time where he can clutch her to himself and pretend.

“I don’t want to go.” His voice shakes, and he tries to keep this muted, lost feeling over him, knowing that he can’t deal with the barrage of emotions waiting for him otherwise. “We could’ve— I _love_ her.”

A hand runs up and down his back, and he refuses to look. There is only Clarke in his eyesight. Only her pink skin and the little freckle on her neck that’s too light to see unless you’re really close. Only blonde hair and the strap of a black dress that he refuses to think of as a funeral shroud.

“We have to go, Bellamy. Come on,” Octavia urges gently. “It’ll be okay.”

He doesn’t want to move, but he refuses to allow anyone to touch Clarke, so in an effort to keep everyone else as far away as possible, he sits up, cradling her small body against his.

It’s a husk, lifeless and empty.

But he carries it out of the room like it’s the most precious piece of glass in the world.

When he finally makes it to her room, where it smells like her in the air and her things litter the tables — he lays her so carefully on the bed.

Then he pulls her body to his chest, knowing there is no other option for him.

He hears people moving around him, trying to make plans and get word to Anya back in Xandri. He blocks them all out. There is only her — his soulmate, his love.

Octavia is wrong. Nothing will ever be okay again.

***

He wishes, throughout every pained moment he endures after her final breaths, that it had been him instead. It should’ve been him — he deserved for it to be him.

She should be here now. There are people who need her more than anyone has ever needed him. A kinder world would’ve allowed him to take her place.

The ground is not kind, and soulmates don’t always get forever.

***

_What do you want, Bellamy?_

It’s her voice that comes to him, plucking him from the empty nothingness of sleep into a dream, a nightmare.

He isn’t sure which it is. But if he gets to hear her voice, he isn’t sure it matters.

“I want you. Just you. Nothing else. Please, Clarke — don’t leave me here alone. Don’t make me do this without you.”

She says nothing, and the silence is colder than her anger could’ve been. He deserves her rage; he deserves her scorn. He did this to her, and he would let her yell for a thousand years before he would wish her away.

_What do you want?_

The words haunt his sleep, because he knows exactly what he wants. He knows, and he just can’t have it.

***

They fight over what to do with the body.

_The body. Clarke’s body._

He tries to tune it out, but sometimes he can’t. Sometimes he fights too — finds himself screaming at Lincoln and Lexa over a table that he doesn’t remember sitting at.

They want to burn her. It’s grounder custom apparently, and though he wants to respect what may indeed have been Clarke’s wishes, and can’t imagine her burnt away, only ashes of her left to this world.

They won’t let him sleep next to her anymore. Lincoln says it’s not sanitary. Octavia says it’s not healthy. Lexa says it’s _a little extreme, even under the circumstances._

They surely think he’s crazy. He doesn’t care.

Still, he fights them. Ideally, nothing would need to be done to Clarke’s body because the part of him that lives outside reality says that she isn’t dead. She isn’t gone.

The part of him that can’t look past the truth, the tiny seedling of pain that permeates the fog, wants her to be buried.

He’s spent his whole life longing for the ground. If she has to be anywhere, he wants her to be there. He wants a place where he can visit her, a place that he can cry and rage and lose himself to her. 

He wants a place for them to bury him beside her. A spot for their eternity — the only _together_ they’ll ever know.

So he shouts, and he weeps, and he begs them to see reason. Bury her outside the walls of Xandri. Let him have a home from which to miss her. Let her memory have roots.

He shuts his eyes, trying to block out that pain.

***

In the end, she’s burned. Lexa and a letter from Anya, the new Queen of Trikru, overrule him.

He spends the final night before it happens holding her hand, even though he’d had to sneak into the room she was being kept in.

She doesn’t look like herself by that point, but he doesn’t mind. He lets the images of her smiling fill his mind instead as he idly rubs at her lifeless fingers.

He could warm them, he could warm them. He could breathe life back into her if only he was strong enough.

He doesn’t try. Not again. Even he knows that the time for hope has passed.

Instead he remembers her in all ways. In the rain, in the sun, in her hunting clothes and her regal gowns, hair up and hair down, frowning and laughing and crying and—

He remembers all night, and in the morning, they take her away.

He doesn’t try to follow. Doesn’t watch as the wooden pyre steals her skin and bones and smiles and sparkling eyes away from him.

He wouldn’t have been able to watch her burning.

And he knows Octavia wouldn’t have allowed him to join her on it, burning away beside her.

It’s all he longs for anymore.

***

They ride back to Xandri, and he never lets the urn — the urn that holds the only pieces of her that he has left — out of his hands. For four days, he clasps it to his chest the way he’d once dreamt of holding her there.

When he closes his eyes against the tears that well up, he can almost imagine the smell of her hair or the touch of her skin.

But it isn’t there. It never is. Never again.

One of Clarke’s higher ranking attendees tries to ride her horse on the way back since it is available, and Bellamy steadfastly refuses. No one will ride on that empty saddle. No one deserves that honor, and he doesn’t deserve to be spared the reminder of what isn’t returning.

Instead, he watches that empty seat each and every day as they make their return, letting it destroy him continually. 

When they make it back through Xandri’s gates, Anya comes to welcome them, though a soft, somber sadness blankets the scene. Bellamy doesn’t bother to listen.

“I never thought you’d make it back here,” Octavia says. After all, he told her that he’d never live long enough to return. She’d only travelled to Polis in the first place because she didn’t want him to die alone.

His heart — somehow still beating away in his chest despite how hard and cold it has grown — clenches at the thought. He shouldn’t be here. He should be wherever it is that she’s gone. Into the fire. To the other shore of their prayers. If her soul has gone, how is it not right for him to follow?

He shakes his head, feeling disconnected from his body, from this scene, from the world around him.

_I never thought you’d make it back here._

“I didn’t.”

***

Anya tries to take the urn from his hands.

He’s certain, in some still-rational corner of his mind, that she hadn’t meant anything by it. These are the only mortal remains of the former queen. The people of Xandri hadn’t been there when Clarke died, and it would be hard to process her death without _something,_ even if that something was only an urn filled with practically anonymous ashes.

Maybe there is meant to be a ceremony to mark her passing. Maybe the final journey of Clarke’s body hasn’t been fulfilled merely by being cremated in Polis. Maybe—

But he doesn’t care, and it isn’t the rational part of his brain that reacts to Anya’s attempt to take them from him.

“No,” he growls, curling his body around the ceramic. His lip trembles even as he tries to assert dominance against the new monarch. “Don’t touch her.”

She furrows her brow at him. The funny thing is, she doesn’t look angry. He’s never seen Anya not looking at least mildly peeved, and the contrast now would almost be laughable if he didn’t know that everyone was walking on eggshells because he isn’t able to string himself back together. 

“Bellamy, we need—”

“No. No, no, this is all—” He gasps, the sound pained. “This is all. All of her. All I have left. Please…”

He holds the urn so tightly to him that he fears he might accidentally crush it, Clarke’s ashes spilling down his body.

But he doesn’t, and she stays put. Stays exactly where she’ll always stay. The thought makes her throat constrict in a familiar, painful way. He wishes it would keep going. He wishes this pain would strangle him, wrapping itself around him like the flower, like the snake. Then he could forget. Then he could stop hearing her final words on a loop in his head. Then there would be silence, silence, _silence,_ until she was there again.

Someday soon, he reminds himself. It’s not forever; they don’t have to be apart for long. Someday soon.

It becomes the mantra that allows him to stand with his shoulders curved in and walk towards the cabin she’d given him, urn still in hand.

It’s the mantra that lets him eat a meagre portion of food at least once a day. It’s the mantra that keeps him waking up and falling asleep, even if the change between the two is hardly noticeable. Even if he never leaves his bed, or sees his friends, or tries to help the people of Xandri.

He can’t do any of that. Not anymore. That was his job with Clarke, and it’s a part of his past now. Someone else can figure out how to lead — there are more than enough members of Skaikru clamouring for the opportunity.

So he doesn’t try to do any of that. Instead, he repeats the mantra over and over again. _Someday soon. Someday soon._

Instead of a vague hope or a future goal, it becomes a lifeline. A single boon. It becomes his fixation; the only promise in the universe that he trusts. 

He could not help her, or save her, or love her — at least not properly, not as she’d deserved. But he can join her, and the thought brings him peace.

_Soon, soon._

He wonders if the tether between them — that unknowable bond that forever links their souls — is trying to pull him to her. He wants it to.

***

Sometimes, Octavia tries to pull him out of the cabin to do other things.

It’s never anything strenuous. Never anything too taxing. She knows better by now than to try that. 

But he still chafes at her efforts to make him come to meals or interact with the other delinquents.

It’s not that he doesn’t like them or doesn’t understand that they’re worried for him. It’s simply that it doesn’t _matter._

If Clarke had been anyone else — if she’d been a random girl he’d met and found himself liking, loving even — this would’ve been hard. It would’ve been awful. But he could’ve moved on at some point, could’ve walked through the stages of grief until eventually his life felt like his own again. Until eventually he could breathe and not feel crushed by the weight of his loss.

Clarke is not anyone else. She is his soulmate even now, even in death. Even spanning two worlds, he knows he belongs to her in a way that no one in Xandri will ever understand unless they too lose their love to hanahaki.

It’s not something he will heal from, because the wound is ever-growing. The distance and time make the ache _worse,_ not better.

And his sister can’t understand that, even if her sad eyes watch him carefully. She knows that it’s different for soulmates, but she can’t imagine it herself. Even he, who had spent weeks imagining losing Clarke to marriage with his own inevitable death to follow, could not have pictured this emptiness until it resided within him.

For every day that he spends on earth, there will be no escape from it. He knows that.

_Someday soon._

The tether that he imagines connecting them tightens.

***

Nearly every night he dreams of her, but never in the way that he wants.

She is always there, just out of reach. She doesn’t castigate him, but neither does she smile. Instead, she just watches, eyes wide and confused, like she can’t quite understand what is happening or where she’s gone.

She looks, and he cries out to her, but it’s never enough. If she hears him, she makes no effort to tell him so. More than likely, his words — his screams and cries, anguished and desperate — cannot bridge the divide between them.

And every morning he wakes feeling as exhausted as he’d been upon falling asleep. He cherishes each moment he can spend looking at her, and yet it’s the cruelest agony to be suspended there with no hope.

But it’s far worse on the mornings after he doesn’t dream of her. Instead of panic and fear and need, there is only that horrible, gaping nothingness, like there’s no reason for anything.

_Someday, someday._

_Soon, soon, soon._

***

After a while, his dreams begin to bleed into the day, and he can no longer tell if he’s awake or asleep. Octavia will be sitting on one side of him and Clarke on the other. Is he imagining his love or dreaming his sister? It becomes impossible to differentiate, and he wonders if this will be his eternal state. Pulled between here and there, existing nowhere at all.

“—Bellamy, are you even listening to me?”

He jerks back into his body, pulled towards Octavia’s voice. They’re sitting at one of the communal tables used for meals, though the others aren’t with them.

He doesn’t want to be here. Doesn’t want to be present in this moment. Unfortunately, dream or not, Octavia has always been loud and impossible to miss. 

“Hm?”

She sighs. “Bell, it’s been months.”

Months? It doesn’t feel possible that it’s been months already. Every moment spins out into an eternity without her, and yet he’s certain it’s only been a few days at most. Even routinely bowled beneath the waves of grief that hit him, he can’t imagine that it’s been so long.

“Months?”

“Yes, _months._ Don’t you—? Never mind. Listen, I know it’s been hard, and I’m not saying you need to be over it or anything. I get it — I spent a long time trying to prepare myself for what losing you would mean, and even with you here, that ache still hits me all the time. But Bell, you have to _try,_ right? You have to want for there to be a light at the end of this darkness, or there never will be.”

There is a light, but not where she wants it to be. _Soon,_ his mind whispers. Someday doesn’t feel far off, and somewhere in his hollow chest, relief flutters. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Clarke — who must be a hallucination, assuming this is the waking world after all — smiles at him solemnly. Her hand sits on the table between them, and he longs to place his over it, but he knows if he tries it’ll dissolve beneath his skin.

Instead, he inches his fingertips carefully towards hers. The smallest possible gap separates his skin from hers, and though he misses the warmth it should radiate, he smiles down at the sight. Her hand is so small, so pale next to his own. It makes him think of fights in the rain and hugs in the council rooms. It makes him think of victory and loss and heartache and hope.

Octavia reaches out, laying her hand over his, and Clarke pulls hers back.

“O—”

“She’s not there, Bell. I know that’s what you’re seeing, but she’s not… She’s _gone._ I don’t think it’s healthy to keep imagining her like a phantom that follows you.”

“What if she’s not?” He asks, whispering the words between them. He doesn’t even turn to look at his sister, his eyes still on Clarke. “Gone. What if she’s not?”

“She is.”

He doesn’t listen, continuing as if she hadn’t spoken at all. “Or what if I’m not really _here?_ Not all the way. What if she and I are both in some… liminal space, waiting to be reunited?”

“I don’t think that’s possible. You _are_ here. I can see you; we can talk and touch.” She squeezes his hand, a reminder that hers can do what Clarke’s cannot. “You’re seeing her, but she’s not there. Your grief is playing into your imaginings.”

“My body’s here, maybe. You can see and touch and talk to that. But I’m not sure that I’m here. I’m not sure that I can be. Not like I should be. I’m somewhere else.”

She tugs his hand until he finally turns to face her. “You don’t have to be somewhere else. Just be here. Just be here with the people who care about you, Bellamy. You don’t have to run headfirst towards death.”

His eyes sting painfully. “Would you be mad at me?”

He doesn’t clarify for what, and she doesn’t need him to.

She closes her eyes, trying to shield herself from this reality. 

And he understands. The hanahaki had taken Clarke, and that had been difficult for everyone. But it had spared _him,_ and he was the one Octavia had been most concerned about. 

In some terrible way, it might’ve felt like a blessing that, if someone had to die, it wasn’t him. She might’ve thought she’d been given a second chance to keep him in her life. Hope for a future with her only family.

The harsh truth is that it isn’t possible. His presence here has been a farce, a mirage. The more anyone pokes at it, the more they will inevitably realize that he hadn’t survived. He hadn’t come home, just as he’d said to her upon their arrival at the gates.

His body is trapped in Polis, still lying on that floor, curled around her protectively. His soul burned away beside hers in the fire.

Octavia presses her lips together, trying to get a hold on her emotions. Then, carefully, she says, “I wouldn’t be mad. But I would miss you, and I don’t want you to go.”

The conversation is a perfect mirror of the one they’d had when she first realized he was dying. Her fear mixed with her inability to condemn him for what she knows he needs.

 _I’m not mad at you for leaving,_ she’d said to him that day, hidden away in his cabin. _I’m mad at the earth and soulmates and flowers. I’m mad that this is going to take you away from me. But I’m not mad at you._

He wonders if she can really keep that promise, even now. Or if someday, _someday,_ she’ll think back on these moments bitterly. If she’ll think he was weak.

“I wouldn’t want to go if I thought there was any hope of finding myself on this side of the divide. If there was, I wouldn’t leave you. But what future is there if I’m not really here in the first place? If the parts of me that are most intrinsic to who I am have been ripped away?” He shakes his head tiredly. “Clarke isn’t the ghost,” he whispers, voice cracking on her name. He almost never says it anymore, even if he thinks it incessantly. “She’s not. I am. I’m the one trapped here, unable to stop haunting you all.”

“But you could keep going like that, and maybe one day… I don’t know. I don’t know how to be here without you.”

“Sure you do. You’re doing it already.”

“No I’m not,” she argues.

“You are. You’re already mourning for me, because you know that whatever is left isn’t enough. And I’m sorry that I can’t be enough, that I can’t find that inside of me anymore. When it’s… _over,_ you’ll be able to mourn properly. You’ll miss me, and Lincoln and the others will help you, and then, in some future time, you’ll be okay again. You will.”

She huffs out an exasperated laugh through her tears. “You realize how hypocritical this whole speech is, right?”

He smiles wanly. “It’s—”

“Different, I know. How you felt about her _transcends the laws of science_ and all that. But still…”

“Yeah, still. I am sorry, you know.”

She pulls him into a hug, sadness consuming them both.

“I know.”

***

Despite the conversation and the way that it untethers him from this side of the world, he doesn’t actually have plans for what happens next.

For all that he’s ready to follow her, he isn’t actually suicidal. He doesn’t want to _die;_ he wants to be with her. 

And though he’s eager for that moment, that promised _someday,_ he doesn’t chase it. He knows it will find him.

***

And she does. Every night she finds him.

Every night that elusive future gets closer and closer, until one night, long after dark has fallen, he picks up her urn and a single purple flower he’d brought home from the aftermath of the wedding, cradling them both carefully as he traipses into the forest beyond the walls of the town.

His feet stumble numbly across the ground, no direction in mind. He hasn’t the faintest idea where he’s going, and yet it’s the right way.

In the distance, he can hear her laugh, the trill echoing through the trees.

Home. It’s home.

He pictures her smiling at him from the other side of the council table, elaborate plans laid out between them. He would kick at her shins playfully, and she would roll her eyes at him.

The sound of her laughter carries him back to those better days. Now, instead of being broken by the memories, they invigorate him. He is so close now. So close to not having to straddle two worlds, to feign any hope of staying here.

He finds a tree, and without warning slumps against it. In his chest, his heart _races,_ feeling alive finally.

When he turns his head, Clarke lies beside him, covered in a sea of flowers that he is almost certain are a part of the hallucination.

“What are you doing here, Clarke?” It comes out with a laugh, the first lighthearted thought he’s had since her death. Though her apparitions have never responded to him before, this time she will. He’s sure of it.

Her eyes don’t open, but she does smile. “Resting. Why? Have you missed me?” She teases.

His grin falters, and in the brief, awkward pause, she finally looks up at him. Her blue eyes, watching him this time without the terror or the blankness that she so often switches between in these visions, are intoxicating. He wants to exist in the golden glory of her gaze for the rest of time. Even in the dark, she is beautiful. Radiant. 

“I’ve missed you so much,” he whispers, hand moving towards hers. It skates across the grass so carefully, desperate not to break this illusion. It’s all he has.

He stops just shy of her hand.

She moves hers to cover his, and he gasps as her skin brushes against him. It’s warm.

“So much,” he forces out, choked by his own sadness and joy. Tears bead along his lashes. “I’m sorry.”

She smiles sadly. “Don’t be. I could’ve stopped this just as easily as you could have.” She laughs, the sound wet with her own tears. “The universe should’ve known we were too stubborn to figure things out for ourselves.”

It’s a joke, but a painfully true one that has had disastrous repercussions. He doesn’t know if he should laugh or fall apart.

Instead, he moves to lay beside her, pulling her body into his. The sun and the moon entwined — both needing the other intrinsically. 

“I love you. And I’m sorry anyway. I wish you were here with me.”

“I love you, too,” she murmurs against his neck. He can feel the way the air stirs with her breaths, and it scares him as much as it entrances him.

But Clarke has always been both. Terrifying and enthralling. There is no escaping her — he knows that now.

Still, the words are a blessing, a gift. Though he’d known, through the tragedy of her death, that she must’ve loved him, he’d never heard the words spoken from her lips. He’d only managed to say it in the panic of her final moments.

Her voice continues. “You’re here now. That’s what matters.”

“And I’m not leaving. I’m not.”

She doesn’t argue. 

He wonders if that makes it more or less likely that it’s really her. Clarke the soulmate would want him to stay with her for all time, but Clarke the pragmatist would still try to send him away, and he isn’t sure which version of her — if any — is in control.

Maybe his hallucinations have simply become more vivid. Maybe his mind is telling him that he is further removed from this world, that there is less of him to try saving.

He doesn’t intend to do any saving.

Hours and hours pass in a haze as they cling to each other. Sometimes they whisper words of love and sadness and hope between them. Sometimes they are silent.

Once, as the sun is rising, he sees a child run across the meadow. Her laugh fills the space just as Clarke’s had.

The girl’s honeyed curls are all too familiar, and he even sees freckles across her cheeks that make him wonder if he’s looking into a mirror.

He feels sure that _she_ at least is a creation of his own mind. Though his eyes track her as she dances between tall flowers, Clarke never looks her way. She never asks about the humming or the laughing or the myriad sounds of delight and play just over her shoulder.

His chin still trembles when he looks between Clarke and the young girl, comparing their similar features.

This is the future that they will never be given, and the reminder sits like a boulder on his chest.

The sun shifts around them, but it might as well be happening to someone else. Shadows shrink and then grow. The moon makes another appearance. The little girl comes and goes, but he and Clarke never move.

Against the tree trunk, he can just barely see the urn he’s carried here, but it feels like a concern for another life, another man. Whenever he thinks about it for too long, he moves a hand to brush along Clarke’s forehead, pushing stray locks of hair out of her eyes.

This is real. Whatever it is, in whatever way it can be, it is real.

It has to be, because otherwise he has nothing.

They don’t move. They don’t eat or drink as another night flows across them. And then another day.

Somewhere, in the back of his fevered mind, the pangs of thirst reach him, but their grasp isn’t enough. Neither is his hunger, or his exhaustion, or anything else.

They are primordial beings at the beginning of time. They need no sustenance beyond devotion, and that is the one thing they have in abundance. The grasses and flowers grow tall and vibrant around them, smiling upon such a union.

He holds her tighter to him. Time stretches out before and behind them, and he will not let it take her away again. 

That sublime cruelty can happen only once. He knows better this time.

Basking in her glow is the only way. Perhaps his future didn’t need to lead here — perhaps, in some better world, they’d found their way to each other without the pain, without the loss. They could live whole lives as soulmates.

But this isn’t a better world. He has her _now,_ and that’s what counts.

 _Let it come,_ his mind whispers. _Soon, soon. Someday soon._

He rests his forehead against hers, lips just barely brushing her own as they breathe. He needs nothing else. This, just this. Just this for all time.

Her hand cradles his cheek, keeping his face pressed to hers.

“Will you miss me?”

His eyes flutter closed. “I won’t have time to miss you.” The words, once from her lips, had haunted his bleakest nightmares. Now, they are his salvation. “Never again.”

“You’re not leaving,” she whispers, and he can’t tell if it’s a condemnation or a request for reassurance.

“I’m not. Not again.”

Though he can’t remember resting at any point since joining her here on the grass, sleep finally comes to him with a smile, stealing over his bones and making him placid and heavy.

“Rest, Bellamy,” he hears, the words soft and sad as she pets his hair. “Just rest now. It’s over. You’ve fought for so long.”

It’s a relief to give in, to finally lay down his burdens. Every moment of his life has been stressful to some degree: being a child in Factory, hiding an illegal sister, losing his mother as Octavia was imprisoned, shooting the Chancellor to come to earth, the realities of earth, hating Clarke, loving Clarke, trying to protect Clarke only to lose her, and then… _after._

There have been many sunshine moments, and yet there has never been a true time of peace.

He welcomes that peace now with open arms, and refuses to feel guilty for it.

“Sleep now,” she says, pressing a tender kiss between his eyebrows. “I’ll protect you.”

He trusts her, and so he does.

They are primordial beings at the beginning of time, at the end of time. Death isn’t final; it’s simply another journey.

***

***

***

Octavia isn’t surprised when she hears the news that _finally,_ after days of searching for her missing brother, they’ve discovered a body.

She orders them to bring her to it, and they do.

Upon seeing him for the last time, her only thought is that he’s… so _peaceful._ Quiet, sleeping. Reconciled finally to what has happened, and going to where he wants to be.

She asks that they bury him here, beneath the tree.

_His final journey to the ground._

“May we meet again,” she whispers. Then she picks up the urn from where he’d set it, moving to rest it in his folded arms. The purple flower gets placed over his heart.

She knows that’s how he’d want it. The thought makes her laugh — he was dramatic as hell and would’ve loved the symbolism.

The first sprinkle of dirt to cover him comes from her hand.

He was right, she supposes. This story wasn’t one of the fairytales he’d told her growing up after all. 

No, it was a tragedy.

***

_Heaven or Hell or somewhere in between,_ _  
__Cross your heart to take me when you leave_ _  
__Don’t go_  
 _Please don’t go_ _  
Don’t go without me_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now go read the happy version to remind yourself that, in another universe, it did work out for them :')

**Author's Note:**

> I appreciate any comments and kudos! You can follow me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/andiebwrites) or prompt me through the carrd listed in the notes at the top!


End file.
